UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


/'J 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 


Books  by 
Ralph  Bergengren 


THE  PERFECT  GENTLEMAN 
THE  COMFORTS  OF  HOME 

Each  $1.00 


For 
Younger  Readers 

JANE,  JOSEPH  AND  JOHN 

Boxed,  $3.00 


The 

SEVEN  AGES  of  MAN 


BY 


RALPH  BERGENGREN 


The  Atlantic  Monthly  Press 
Boston 


COPYRIGHT,  1921,  BY 
RALPH  BERGENGREN 


PS 


CONTENTS 

I.    Baby,  Baby     ....  I 

II.  To  be  a  Boy     ....  17 

III.  On  Meeting  the  Beloved    .  33 

IV.  This  is  a  Father     ...  47 
V.   On  Being  a  Landlord   .       .  64 

VI.   Old  Flies  and  Old  Men      .  78 
VII.   The  Olde,  Olde,  Very  Olde 

Man 94 


203745 


BABY,  BABY 

In  meeting  a  baby,  one  should  behave  as 
much  as  possible  like  a  baby  one's  self. 
We  cannot,  of  course,  diminish  our  size, 
or  exchange  our  customary  garments  for 
baby- clothes;  neither  can  we  arrive  in  a 
perambulator,  and  be  conveyed  in  the 
arms,  either  of  a  parent  or  a  nursemaid, 
into  the  presence  of  the  baby  whom  we  are 
to  meet.  The  best  we  can  do  is  to  hang,  as 
it  were  on  the  hatrack,  our  preconceived 
ideas  of  what  manner  of  behavior  enter 
tains  a  baby,  as  cooing,  grimacing,  tick 
ling,  and  the  like,  and  model  our  deport 
ment  on  the  dignified  but  friendly  reticence 
that  one  baby  evinces  in  meeting  another. 
-  BABY  :  HIS  FRIENDS  AND  FOES. 

OF  the  many  questions  that  Mr.  Bos- 
well,  at  one  time  and  another,  asked  his 
i 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

friend,  Dr.  Johnson,  I  can  hardly  recall 
another  more  searching  than  one  that  he 
himself  describes  as  whimsical. 

"I  know  not  how  so  whimsical  a 
thought  came  into  my  head,"  says  Bos- 
well,  "but  I  asked,  'If,  sir,  you  were 
shut  up  in  a  castle,  and  a  new-born  child 
with  you,  what  would  you  do?' 

"JOHNSON:  Why,  sir,  I  should  not 
much  like  my  company. 

"BOSWELL:  But  would  you  take  the 
trouble  of  rearing  it? 

"  He  seemed,  as  may  be  supposed,  un 
willing  to  pursue  the  subject:  but,  upon 
my  persevering  in  my  question,  replied, 
'  Why,  yes,  sir,  I  would ;  but  I  must  have 
all  conveniences.  If  I  had  no  garden,  I 
would  make  a  shed  on  the  roof,  and  take 
it  there  for  fresh  air.  I  should  feed  it, 
and  wash  it  much,  and  with  warm 
water,  to  please  it,  not  with  cold  water, 
to  give  it  pain.' 

2 


BABY,  BABY 

"BOSWELL:  But,  sir,  does  not  heat 
relax? 

"JOHNSON:  Sir,  you  are  not  to  imag 
ine  the  water  is  to  be  very  hot.  I  would 
not  coddle  the  child." 

It  appears,  too,  that  the  Doctor  had 
given  some  thought  to  the  subject,  al 
though  never  expecting  to  be  a  mother 
himself:  his  immediate  insistence  upon 
fresh  air  promises  well  for  the  infant, 
and  the  frequency  with  which  he  pro 
poses  to  wash  his  little  companion  indi 
cates  that,  so  long  as  the  water-supply 
of  the  castle  lasted,  he  would  have  done 
his  part.  A  cow  in  the  castle  seems  to 
have  been  taken  for  granted;  but,  in 
1769,  even  Dr.  Johnson  would  have 
known  little  or  nothing  about  formulas, 
nor  would  it  have  occurred  to  him  to 
make  a  pasteurizing  apparatus,  as  so 
many  parents  do  nowadays,  out  of  a 
large  tin  pail  and  a  pie-plate.  Here  the 
3 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

baby  would  have  had  to  take  his  eight 
eenth-century  chance.  And  I  wish,  too, 
that  he  might  have  had  a  copy  of  "The 
Baby's  Physical  Culture  Guide,"  that 
modern  compendium  of  twenty-four 
exercises,  by  which  a  reasonably  strong- 
armed  mother  may  strengthen  and  de 
velop  the  infant's  tiny  muscles;  for  I 
like  to  think  of  Dr.  Johnson  exercising 
his  innocent  companion  in  his  shed  on 
the  roof.  "Sir,"  he  says,  "I  do  not 
much  like  my  employment;  but  here 
we  are,  and  we'll  have  to  make  the 
best  of  it." 

Such  an  experience,  no  doubt,  would 
have  been  good  for  Dr.  Johnson,  and 
good  for  the  baby  (if  it  survived) .  ' '  That 
into  which  his  little  mind  is  to  develop," 
says  "The  Baby's  Physical  Culture 
Guide,"  "  is  plastic  —  like  a  wax  record, 
ready  to  retain  such  impressions  as  are 
made  upon  it";  and  on  this  wax  some, 
4 


BABY,  BABY 

at  least,  of  the  impressions  left  by  Dr. 
Johnson  must  have  been  valuable.  But 
on  the  real  mystery  of  babyhood  —  the 
insoluble  enigma  that  the  "Guide"  can 
only  in  small  measure  dispose  of  by  com 
paring  the  rearing  of  an  infant  with  the 
home-manufacture  of  a  record  for  the 
gramaphone  —  the  experience  would 
have  thrown  no  light. 

The  Doctor,  I  dare  say,  would  have 
written  a  paper  on  the  feeding  and  wash 
ing  of  infants,  and  later  dictionaries  of 
familiar  quotation  might  perhaps  have 
been  enriched  by  the  phrase, " '  The  baby 
is  grandfather  to  the  man.'  —  JOHN 
SON."  But  of  this  grandfather  the  man 
has  no  memory.  His  babyhood  is  a  past 
concerning  which  he  is  perforce  silent,  a 
time  when  it  is  only  by  the  report  of 
others  that  he  knows  he  was  living. 
His  little  mind  seems  to  have  been  more 
than  a  little  blank;  and  although  gifted 
5 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

novelists  have  set  themselves  the  imag 
inative  task  of  thinking  and  writing 
like  babies,  none,  in  my  reading,  has 
ever  plausibly  succeeded.  The  best  they 
can  do  is  to  think  and  write  like  little 
adults.  I  recall,  for  example,  the  honest 
effort  of  Miss  May  Sinclair,  whom  I 
greatly  respect  as  an  adult,  to  see  Mr. 
Olivier  through  the  eyes  of  his  baby 
daughter  Mary.  "Papa  sat  up,  broad 
and  tall  above  the  table,  all  by  himself. 
He  was  dressed  in  black.  One  long 
brown  beard  hung  down  in  front  of  him 
and  one  short  beard  covered  his  mouth. 
You  knew  he  was  smiling  because  his 
cheeks  swelled  high  up  in  his  face,  so 
that  his  eyes  were  squeezed  into  narrow, 
shining  slits.  When  they  came  out 
again,  you  saw  scarlet  specks  and  smears 
in  their  corners."  A  fearsome  Papa!  - 
and,  although  I  have  no  way  of  knowing 
that  fathers  do  not  present  themselves 
6 


BABY,  BABY 

in  this  futurist  aspect  to  their  helpless 
offspring,  I  am  glad  to  think  otherwise. 
At  all  events  a  baby  is,  and  must  be, 
well  used  to  living  in  Brobdingnag. 

It  would  be  a  surprising  thing,  if  it 
were  not  so  common,  that  a  man  shows 
so  little  curiosity  about  this  forgotten 
period  of  his  life.  But  such  curiosity 
would  be  impossible  to  satisfy.  Existing 
photographs  of  him  at  that  time  are  a 
disappointment:  he  seldom  admits  see 
ing  any  resemblance,  and,  if  he  does,  the 
likeness  rarely,  if  ever,  gives  him  any 
visible  satisfaction.  Nor  can  anything 
of  real  and  personal  interest  be  found 
out  by  interviewing  those  who  then 
knew  him.  Of  a  hundred,  nay,  of  a 
thousand  or  a  million  babies,  —  and 
though  I  cannot  speak  as  a  woman,  it 
seems  to  me  (except,  perhaps,  for  a  live 
lier  interest  and  pleasure  among  them  in 
their  infant  appearance)  that  everything 
7 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

I  am  saying  applies  equally  to  babies 
of  that  fascinating  sex,  —  the  trivial 
details  observed  by  those  who  are  near 
est  them  are  practically  identical.  They 
thump  their  heads.  They  chew  their 
fingers.  They  try  to  feed  their  toes;  and, 
sillier  yet,  they  try  to  feed  them  with 
things  that  are  obviously  inedible.  And 
so  forth.  And  so  forth.  If  Dr.  Johnson, 
actually  shut  up  in  a  castle,  and  a  new 
born  child  with  him ,  had  kept  a  record ,  the 
result  would  have  been  very  much  like 
the  records  that  mothers  now  keep  in 
what,  unless  I  am  mistaken,  are  called 
"  Baby  Books."  If  you  Ve  seen  one  Baby 
Book,  as  the  cynical  old  man  said  about 
circuses,  you've  seen  all  of  'em. 

Nor  does  any  man  take  pleasure  in 
preserving  and  reading  over  his  own 
Baby  Book.  Hercules,  to  be  sure,  might 
have  been  interested  to  read  in  his 
mother's  handwriting,  — 
8 


BABY,  BABY 

"  Tuesday.  An  eventful  day.  Two 
big,  horrid  Snakes  came  in  from  the 
garden,  and  got  in  Darling's  cradle, 
frightening  Nurse  into  hysterics;  but 
Darling  only  cooed  and  strangled  them 
both  with  his  dear,  strong  little  hands. 
He  gets  stronger  and  cunninger  every 
day.  When  the  horrid  Snakes  were 
taken  away  from  him,  he  cried  and  said, 
'Atta!  Atta!'" 

But  Hercules  was  an  exceptionally  in 
teresting  baby;  and  the  average  Baby 
Book  records  nothing  that  a  grown  man 
can  regard  with  pride,- and  much,  if  he 
has  any  sensitiveness  at  all,  that  must 
make  him  blush.  Nothing  but  respect 
for  his  mother,  it  is  almost  safe  to  say, 
would  withhold  him  from  hurrying  the 
incriminating  document  to  the  cellar, 
and  cremating  it  in  the  furnace. 

For  in  the  beginning  Captain  William 
Kidd,  George  Washington,  Dr.  Johnson, 
9 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

the  writer  of  this  essay,  and  even  the 
editor  of  the '  'Atlantic  Monthly, ' '  looked 
and  behaved  very  much  alike.  And  so, 
for  that  matter,  did  little  Moll  Cutpurse 
and  little  Susan  B.  Anthony.  So  far  as 
anybody  could  then  have  said,  Captain 
Kidd  might  have  become  a  thoughtful, 
law-abiding  essayist,  and  I  a  pirate, 
handicapped,  indeed,  by  changed  con 
ditions  of  maritime  traffic,  but  uncon- 
scientiously  doing  my  wicked  best. 

As  the  twig  is  bent,  says  the  proverb, 
so  is  the  tree  inclined;  but  these  little 
twigs  are  bent  already,  and  I  humbly 
submit,  with  all  respect  to  my  scientific 
friends,  and  their  white  mice  and  their 
guinea  pigs,  that  where  and  how  it  hap 
pened  remains  an  insoluble  mystery. 
Little  as  I  know  about  myself,  I  know 
that  I  am  neither  a  white  mouse  nor  a 
guinea  pig.  And  this,  mark  you,  is 
no  mere  conceit.  Scientists  themselves 
10 


BABY,  BABY 

have  decided  that  when  babies,  in  that 
remote  past  when  they  first  began  really 
to  interest  their  parents,  and  the  human 
mother,  the  most  pathetic  figure  of  that 
primitive  world,  first  began  the  personal 
and  affectionate  observation  that  was 
to  develop  slowly,  over  millions  of  years, 
until  it  found  expression  in  the  first 
Baby  Book  —  scientists,  themselves,  I 
say,  have  decided  that,  then  and  there, 
you  and  I,  intelligent  reader,  began  to 
differ  essentially  from  every  other  known 
kind  of  mammal.  There  appeared  — 
oh,  wonder!  —  something  psychical  as 
well  as  physical  about  us;  but  where  it 
came  from,  they  cannot  tell  us.  "  Natural 
selection,"  so  John  Fiske  once  summed 
up  this  opinion,  "  began  to  follow  a  new 
path  and  make  psychical  changes  instead 
of  physical  changes."  Little  enough 
there  seems  to  have  been  to  start  with; 
little  enough,  indeed,  there  seems  to  be 
ii 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

now  —  yet  enough  more  to  encourage 
us  to  believe  that  Baby  is  a  lot  further 
along  in  the  right  direction  than  he  was 
a  good  many  million  years  ago.  And 
with  this  helpful  conviction,  Baby  him 
self,  whether  he  will  grow  up  to  write 
essays  or  commit  picturesque  murder, 
seems  reasonably  well  satisfied.  We 
solemn  adults,  standing  around  the  crib, 
may  well  admire,  not  so  much  the  pink- 
ness  and  chubbiness  of  his  toes,  as  the 
pinkness  and  chubbiness  (if  I  may  so 
express  it)  of  his  simple  satisfaction 
with  the  mere  fact  of  existence,  his  sim 
ple  faith  in  the  Universe.  And  when  we 
think  how  impossible  it  is  to  think  of  its 
beginning,  we,  too,  may  capture  some 
thing  of  this  infantile  optimism. 

It  is  by  no  means  impossible  (though 

not  susceptible  of  scientific  proof)  that 

Baby  may  have  a  life  of  his  own;  and, 

if  we  may  assume  Hercules  weeping 

12 


BABY,  BABY 

and  saying,  "Atta!  Atta!"  -because 
shrewd  observers  of  babyhood  declare 
it  to  be  characteristic  of  babies  to  say, 
"Atta!  Atta!"  when  something  desir 
able,  in  this  case  two  dead  snakes,  is 
removed  from  their  range  of  vision,  — 
may  we  not  assume  also  a  universal  lan 
guage  of  babies,  and  a  place,  such  as  it 
may  be,  from  which  they  have  emi 
grated?  Here,  indeed,  one  follows  M. 
Maeterlinck,  except  that,  in  his  judg 
ment,  unborn  babies  speak  French. 
Such  a  theory  is  no  help  to  the  novelist, 
for  in  that  case  baby  Mary  Olivier's 
impressions  of  Mr.  Olivier  must  be 
rendered  in  baby  —  a  language  equally 
unknown  to  Miss  Sinclair  and  to  her 
readers.  Babies  have  been  heard  to  say, 
for  example,  "Nja  njan  dada  atta 
mama  papa'i  attaina-na-nahattameene'- 
meene'-meene'  m6mm  mftmma  ao-u"  — 
and  who  but  another  baby  knows 
13 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

whether  this  may  not  be  speech?  The 
assumption  that  this  is  an  effort  to  speak 
the  language  of  the  baby's  elders  is  aca 
demic,  as,  for  that  matter,  is  the  assump 
tion  that  they  are  his  elders.  There 
may  even  be  no  baby  at  all;  for,  as 
Schopenhauer  has  almost  brusquely  put 
it.  "The  uneasiness  that  keeps  the  never- 
resting  clock  of  metaphysics  in  motion, 
is  the  consciousness  that  the  non-exist 
ence  of  this  world  is  just  as  possible  as 
its  existence."  But  this,  I  confess,  is  far 
too  deep  for  me. 

Baby,  baby  in  your  cot, 
Are  you  there?  —  or  are  you  not? 
If  you're  not,  then  what  of  me! 
Baby,  what  and  where  are  we? 

For  all  practical  purposes,  however, 
Baby  is  sufficiently  real  —  substantial 
enough,  indeed,  as  "The  Baby's  Physi 
cal  Culture  Guide"  shows  in  Exercise 
24,  to  be  lifted  by  his  little  feet  and 
stood  on  his  little  head ;  but,  mercifully 


BABY,  BABY 

adds  the  "Guide,"  "do  not  hold  Baby 
on  his  head  very  long."  For  all  practical 
purposes  we  must,  and  do,  assume  our 
own  existence.  "Here  we  are,"  as  I 
have  imagined  Dr.  Johnson  saying  to 
his  innocent  new-born  comrade,  "and 
we'll  have  to  make  the  best  of  it."  No 
body  has  thought  of  a  better  way,  or 
any  other  way  at  all,  for  us  to  get  here; 
and  the  familiar  Biblical  phrase,  'born 
again,'  may  perhaps  be  more  literal  than 
we  are  wont  to  imagine,  and  apply  to 
this  world  as  well  as  the  next.  Baby 
himself  may  just  have  been  born  again. 
That  innocent-seeming  and  rather  silly- 
sounding  monologue,  which  we  flatter 
ourselves  is  an  earnest  attempt  to  imi 
tate  our  own  speech,  —  "  Nja  njan  dada 
atta  mama  papai  attai  na-na-na  hatta 
meene'-meene'-meene'  mftmm  m6mma 
ao-u, ' '  —  may  it  not  be  the  soliloquy  of  a 
gentle  philosopher,  or,  again,  the  confes- 
15 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

sion  of  an  out-and-out  rascal,  talking  to 
himself  of  his  misdeeds,  chuckling  and 
cooing  over  them,  indeed,  before  he  for 
gets  them  in  this  new  state  of  being? 
May  not  Papa,  waggishly  shaking  his 
forefinger  and  saying,  "You  little  rascal, 
you,"  be  speaking  with  a  truthfulness 
which,  if  known,  would  make  him  sick? 

Meanwhile,  as  says  "The  Baby's 
Physical  Culture  Guide,"  "Don't  jerk 
Baby  round.  Never  rush  through  his 
exercises,  but  talk  to  him  in  a  happy,  en 
couraging  way.  When  he  is  able  to  talk 
he  will  be  glad  to  tell  you  what  great, 
good  fun  he  has  been  having." 

So  speaks,  I  think,  a  mother's  imagi 
nation;  in  sober  reality,  even  the  great 
good  fun  of  Exercise  24  will  be  forgot 
ten.  Which  is  perhaps  why,  although  I 
have  heard  men  wish  they  could  again  be 
children,  I  have  never  heard  any  man 
say  he  would  like  to  be  a  baby. 


II 

TO  BE  A  BOY 

I  love  dearly  to  watch  the  boys  at  their 
play.  How  gayly  they  pitch  and  catch 
their  baseball  with  their  strong  little  hands! 
How  blithely  they  run  from  base  to  base! 
How  merrily  their  voices  come  to  me  across 
the  green;  for,  although  I  cannot  hear 
what  they  say,  I  know  it  expresses  a 
young,  innocent  joy  in  this  big,  good 
world.  Yet  even  in  this  Garden  there  is  a 
Serpent,  and  one  day  two  of  the  little  inno 
cents  quarreled  and  came  to  blows.  A  real 
fight!  I  soon  hurried  out  and  stopped 
that,  but  the  sight  of  their  little  faces  dis 
torted  with  rage,  and  one  poor  boy  bleed 
ing  at  the  nose,  upset  me  for  quite  a  time. 
—  AN  OLD  MAID'S  WINDOW. 

IN  "The  Boyhood  of  Great  Men," 
published  by  Harper  and  Brothers,  in 
17 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

1853,  but  now,  I  fear,  very  little  read,  it 
is  told  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  that  "An  ac 
cident  first  fired  him  to  strive  for  dis 
tinction  in  the  school-room.  The  boy 
who  was  immediately  above  him  in  the 
class,  after  treating  him  with  a  tyranny 
hard  to  bear,  was  cruel  enough  to  kick 
him  in  the  stomach,  with  a  severity  that 
caused  great  pain.  Newton  resolved  to 
have  his  revenge,  but  of  such  a  kind  as 
was  natural  to  his  reasoning  mind,  even 
at  that  immature  age.  He  determined 
to  excel  his  oppressor  in  their  studies 
and  lessons;  and,  setting  himself  to  the 
task  with  zeal  and  diligence,  he  never 
halted  in  his  course  till  he  had  found  his 
way  to  the  top  of  the  class ;  thus  exhibit 
ing  and  leaving  a  noble  example  to 
others  of  his  years  similarly  situated. 
Doubtless,  after  this,  he  would  heartily 
forgive  his  crestfallen  persecutor,  who 
could  not  but  henceforth  feel  ashamed 
18 


TO  BE  A  BOY 

of  his  unmanly  conduct,  while  Newton 
would  feel  the  proud  consciousness  of 
having  done  his  duty  after  the  bravest 
and  noblest  fashion  which  it  is  in  the 
power  of  man  to  adopt." 

We  cannot  all  be  Sir  Isaac  Newtons, 
and,  although  I  may  wish  for  a  passing 
moment  that  some  sturdy  little  school 
fellow  had  kicked  me  too  in  the  stomach, 
the  resulting  sequence  of  events  would 
probably  have  been  different,  and  the 
world  would  have  gained  little  or  noth 
ing  by  my  natural  indignation.  Having 
an  impartial  mind,  I  should  like  to  know 
also  why  Sir  Isaac  was  kicked  in  the 
stomach,  and  what  became  afterward  of 
the  boy  who  kicked  him.  As  his  fame 
grew  in  the  world,  the  reflected  glory  of 
having  thus  kicked  Sir  Isaac  Newton  in 
the  stomach  would  presumably  have 
brightened  in  proportion,  but,  lacking 
Other  distinction,  the  kicker  served  his 
19 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

evolutionary  purpose  and  has  now  van 
ished. 

But  this  much  remains  of  him  —  that 
his  little  foot  kicks  also  in  the  stomach 
the  widely  accepted  fallacy  that  boy 
hood  is  an  age  of  unalloyed  gold,  to 
which  every  man  now  and  then  looks 
back  and  vainly  yearns  to  be  a  boy 
again.  ' '  Oh !  happy  years ! "  —  so  sighed 
the  poet  Byron,  —  "once  more,  who 
would  not  be  a  boy?  "  And  so  to-day,  as 
one  may  at  least  deduce  from  his  general 
newspaper  reading,  sigh  all  the  editors 
of  all  the  newspapers  in  the  United 
States.  Not,  indeed,  for  a  boyhood  like 
Sir  Isaac  Newton's,  but  for  the  standard 
American  boyhood,  to  which,  in  theory, 
every  ageing  American  looks  back 
with  tender  reminiscence  —  that  happy 
time  when  he  went  barefooted,  played 
"hookey  "  from  school,  fished  in  the  run 
ning  brook  with  a  bent  pin  for  a  hook,  and 
20 


TO  BE  A  BOY 

swam,  with  other  future  bankers,  mer 
chants,  clerks,  clergymen,  physicians 
and  surgeons,  confidence-men, pickpock 
ets,  authors,  actors,  burglars,  etc.,  etc., 
in  an  old  swimming-hole.  The  democ 
racy  of  the  old  swimming-hole  is,  in 
fact,  the  democracy  of  the  United  States, 
naked  and  unashamed ;  and  even  in  the 
midst  of  a  wave  of  crime  (one  might  al 
most  imagine),  if  the  victim  should  say 
suddenly  to  the  hold-up  man,  — 

"Oh,  do  you  remember  the  ole  swimmin'  hole, 

And  the  hours  we  spent  there  together; 
Where  the  oak  and  the  chestnut  o'ershadowed  the 

bowl, 
And  tempered  the  hot  summer  weather? 

Ah,  sweet  were  those  hours  together  we  spent 

In  innocent  laughter  and  joy! 
How  little  we  knew  at  the  time  what  it  meant 

To  be  just  a  boy  —  just  a  boy!" 

—  the   hold-up   man   would   drop   his 
automatic  gun,  and  the  two  would  dis 
solve  on  each  other's  necks  in  a  flood 
of  sympathetic  tears. 
21 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

It  is  a  pleasant  and  harmless  fallacy, 
and  I  for  one  would  not  destroy  it ;  I  am 
no  such  stickler  for  exactitude  that  I 
would  take  away  from  any  man  what 
ever  pleasure  he  may  derive  from  think 
ing  that  he  was  once  a  barefoot  boy, 
even  if  circumstances  were  against  him 
and  his  mother  as  adamant  in  her  re 
fusal  to  let  him  go  barefooted.  But  the 
fallacy  is  indestructible:  the  symbols 
may  not  have  been  universal,  but  it  is 
true  enough  of  boyhood  that  time  then 
seems  to  be  without  limit ;  and  this  com 
fortable,  unthinking  sense  of  immortal 
ity  is  what  men  have  lost  and  would 
fain  recover.  One  forgets  how  cruelly 
slow  moved  the  hands  of  the  schoolroom 
clock  through  the  last,  long,  lingering, 
eternal  fifteen  minutes  of  the  daily  life- 
sentence.  One  forgets  how  feverishly  the 
seconds  chased  each  other,  faster  than 
human  feet  could  follow,  when  one's  little 

22 


TO  BE  A  BOY 

self  was  late  for  school,  and  the  clamor 
of  the  distant  bell  ended  in  a  solemn, 
ominous  silence.  Then  was  the  oppor 
tunity  for  stout  heart  to  play  "  hookey," 
and  to  lure  the  finny  tribe  with  a  poor 
worm  impaled  on  a  bent  pin;  and  that, 
in  the  opinion  of  all  the  editors  of  all  the 
newspapers  in  the  United  States,  is 
what  all  of  us  always  did.  But  in  the 
painful  reality  most  of  us,  I  think,  tried 
to  overtake  those  feverish  seconds,  seek 
ing  indeed  to  outrun  time,  and  somehow 
or  other,  though  the  bell  had  stopped 
ringing,  get  unostentatiously  into  our 
little  seats  before  it  stopped.  And  so  we 
ran,  and  ran,  and  ran,  lifting  one  leaden 
foot  after  the  other  with  hopeless  deter 
mination,  in  a  silent,  nightmare  world 
where  the  road  was  made  of  glue  and  the 
very  trees  along  the  way  turned  their 
leaves  to  watch  us  drag  slowly  by.  Little 
respect  we  would  have  had  then  for  the 
23 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

poet  Byron  and  his  "Ah!  happy  years! 
once  more,  who  would  not  be  a  boy?" 

But  even  when  time  seemed  to  stand 
still,  or  go  too  fast,  we  had  no  conscious 
ness  that  the  complicated  clock  of  our 
individual  existence  could  ever  run 
down  and  stop;  and  so  happily  care 
less  were  we  of  this  treasure,  that  we 
often  wished  to  be  men!  "When  I  was 
young,"  says  the  author  of  "The  Boy's 
Week-Day  Book,"  —  another  volume 
that  is  not  read  nowadays  as  much  as  it 
used  to  be,  — 

I  doubted  not  the  time  would  come, 
When  grown  to  man's  estate, 

That  I  would  be  a  noble  'squire, 
And  live  among  the  great. 

It  was  a  proud,  aspiring  thought, 
That  should  have  been  exiled :  — 

I  wish  I  was  more  humble  now 
Than  when  I  was  a  child. 

I  wonder  what  proud,  aspiring  thought 

Uncle  Jones,  as  he  called  himself,  just 

then  had  in  mind ;  but  it  was  evidently 

24 


TO  BE  A  BOY 

no  wish  to  be  a  boy  again:  perhaps  he 
meditated  matrimony. 

For  my  own  part  I  cannot  successfully 
wish  to  be  a  boy;  I  remain  impervious 
to  all  the  efforts  of  all  the  editors  of  all 
the  newspapers  in  the  United  States  to 
dim  my  eye;  and  there  must  be  many 
another  eye  like  mine,  or  else  it  is  unbe 
lievably  unique.  I  lean  back  in  my 
chair,  close  my  undimmed  eye,  and  do 
my  best;  but,  contrary  to  all  editorial 
expectation,  I  can  summon  no  desire  to 
go  barefooted,  fish  with  a  bent  pin,  or 
revisit  the  old  swimming-hole 

Where  the  elm  and  the  chestnut  o'ershadowed  the 

bowl, 
And  tempered  the  hot  summer  weather. 

I  prefer  a  beach  and  a  bathing-suit  and 
somebody  my  own  age.  Yet  do  not 
think,  shocked  reader,  that  I  am  unsym 
pathetic  with  youth.  I  am  more  sym 
pathetic  —  that  is  all  —  with  my  con- 
25 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

temporaries;  and  the  thought  forces 
itself  upon  me  that  boyhood  is  a  narrow 
and  conventional  period,  in  which  my 
own  desire  to  go  without  shoes  was  ex 
actly  similar  to  my  mother's  determina 
tion  to  wear  a  bustle.  Equally  anxious 
to  follow  the  fashion  of  our  respective 
sets,  neither  understood  the  other;  and 
I  would  no  more  have  worn  a  bustle 
than  my  mother  would  have  gone  bare 
footed.  My  father,  similarly  thwarted 
in  a  single  desire,  would  have  cared  less : 
his  wider  interests  —  politics,  business, 
family,  the  local  and  world  gossip  that 
immersed  him  in  his  newspaper,  art, 
literature,  music,  and  the  drama,  to  say 
nothing  of  professional  baseball  and 
pugilism  (in  which,  however,  many  fa 
thers  and  sons  have  a  common  interest) 
—  would  have  absorbed  his  disappoint 
ment. 

But  my  narrower  world,  so  to  speak, 
26 


TO  BE  A  BOY 

was  all  feet.  An  unconventional  boy,  as 
I  think  the  most  erudite  student  of  boy- 
life  and  boy-psychology  will  admit,  is 
much  more  rare  than  an  unconventional- 
man  ;  and  even  then  his  unconventional- 
ity  is  likely  to  be  imposed  upon  him 
"for  his  own  good"  by  well-meaning 
but  tyrannical  parents.  "  I  have  known 
boys,"  wrote  Uncle  Jones,  observing  but 
not  comprehending  this  characteristic 
fact,  "when  playing  at  'Hare  and 
hounds'  and  'Follow  my  leader,'  to 
scramble  over  hedges,  leap  over  brooks, 
and  mount  up  precipices,  in  a  manner 
which  they  would  not  have  dared  to  at 
tempt,  had  it  not  been  for  the  examples 
set  them  by  their  school-fellows;  but," 
he  adds,  "I  do  not  remember  any  in 
stance  of  a  boy  imitating  another  on 
account  of  his  good  temper,  patience, 
forbearance,  principle,  or  piety." 

Naturally  not.    You  and   I,   Uncle 
27 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

Jones,  might  be  expected  to  imitate  each 
other's  good  temper,  patience,  forbear 
ance,  principle,  or  piety,  —  though  I  do 
not  say  that  we  would,  —  but  from  the 
point  of  view  of  a  boy  these  virtues  are 
unconventional.  Their  practice  shocks 
and  disconcerts  the  observer.  The  be 
havior  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  when  kicked 
in  the  stomach,  was  perfectly  scanda 
lous. 

And  what  is  there,  after  all,  in  the  life 
of  a  boy,  that  a  man  would  find  interest 
ing?  Or  that  he  may  not  do,  if  such  is 
sufficiently  his  desire  to  "make"  the 
time  for  it,  as  he  makes  time  for  his 
adult  pleasures,  and  if  he  is  not  too  old 
or  too  fat?  He  can  spend  his  vacation 
at  the  old  swimming-hole  —  but  he 
never  does  it.  He  can  go  barefooted 
whenever  he  wishes:  his  mother  can  no 
longer  prevent  him.  He  can  fish  with  a 
bent  pin  in  the  porcelain  bathtub,  — 
28 


TO  BE  A  BOY 

adding  a  goldfish  to  make  the  pursuit 
more  exciting,  —  every  morning  before 
he  takes  his  bath.  He  can  chase  butter 
flies;  here  and  there,  indeed,  a  man 
makes  a  profession  of  it,  and  institutions 
of  learning  call  him  an  entomologist, 
and  pay  him  much  honor  and  a  small 
salary.  Nobody  forbids  him  to  enlarge 
his  mental  horizon  by  reading  the  lives 
of  criminals  and  detectives;  and  I  can 
myself  direct  him  to  many  an  entertain 
ing  book,  which  is  at  once  far  worse  and 
far  better,  morally  and  artistically,  than 
the  sober  narratives  that  Old  Sleuth 
used  to  write  by  the  yard  for  boys  to 
read  by  stealth.  He  can  roll  a  hoop;  in 
many  cases  it  would  do  him  a  world  of 
good  to  roll  it  down  to  the  office  in  the 
morning  and  back  home  at  night.  If  he 
can  persuade  other  ageing  men,  wishful 
of  renewed  boyhood,  to  join  with  him, 
he  can  play  at  marbles,  tick,  puss-in- 
29 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

the-corner,  hop-scotch,  ring-taw,  and 
"Hot  beans  ready  buttered."  (Uncle 
Jones  mentions  these  games.  I  do  not 
remember  all  of  them  myself,  but  "Hot 
beans  ready  buttered  "  sounds  especially 
interesting.)  And  where  better  than 
in  some  green,  quiet  corner  at  the 
Country  Club?  And  why,  if  you  will- 
raise  the  question  of  conventionality, 
why  more  foolish  than  golf,  or  folk- 
dancing? 

But  what  he  cannot  do  is  to  assume 
the  boy's  unconsciousness  of  his  own 
mortality.  What  he  cannot  unload  is 
his  own  consciousness  of  responsibility 
to  and  for  others.  Life,  in  short,  has 
provided  the  man  with  a  worrying  com 
pany  of  creditors  of  whom  the  boy 
knows  nothing  —  Creditor  Cost-of- Liv 
ing,  Creditor  Ambition,  Creditor  Con 
science,  and  Creditor  Death.  And  the 
boy  is  unmarried !  It  is  even  claimed  by 
30 


TO  BE  A  BOY 

one  philosopher  of  my  acquaintance 
that  this  is  why  men  wish  they  were 
once  more  boys.  I  grant  the  plausibility 
of  this  opinion;  for  the  more  a  man  is 
is  devoted  to  his  wife  and  family,  the 
more  he  is  beset  and  worried  by  these 
troublesome  creditors,  the  more,  one 
may  reasonably  argue,  he  feels  the  need 
of  time  to  meet  his  obligations,  and  is 
likely  now  and  then  to  envy  the  boy  his 
narrow,  conventional,  but  immortal- 
feeling  life. 

Uncle  Jones  misses,  I  think,  this  fun 
damental  fact.  He  is  always  trying  to 
destroy  the  boy's  sense  of  immortality 
in  this  world  by  trying  to  persuade  him 
to  read  the  Bible  and  prepare  for  immor 
tality  in  the  next.  "When  a  boy  first  be 
gins  his  A  B  C,"  says  Uncle  Jones,  "it  is 
terrible  work  for  him  for  a  short  time; 
yet  how  soon  he  gets  over  it,  and  begins 
to  read!  And,  then,  what  a  pleasure  to 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

be  able  to  read  a  good  and  pleasant 
book !  Oh ,  it  is  worth  while  to  go  through 
the  trouble  of  learning  to  read  fifty 
times  over,  to  obtain  the  advantage  of 
reading  the  Bible." 


Ill 

ON  MEETING  THE  BELOVED 

Now  it  is  a  quainte  Oddity  of  thys  State 
and  Mysterie  of  Loue  that  youre  trew 
Louer  combines  the  opposyte  qualities  of  a 
deepe  Hwnilitie  and  a  loftie  Conceit  of 
Hymselfe.  For  with  respect  to  this,  hys 
Mistresse,  he  believes  himself  a  most  infe 
rior  Person,  and  as  it  were  a  mere  Worme; 
yet  if  he  doth  suspect  her  to  regard  any 
Man  els  as  his  Equal,  he  is  consumed 
with  great  Astonishment  and  raging  In 
dignation,  for  this  same  Loue  is  a  great 
Destroyer  of  Common  Sense  in  its  Vic- 
times.  For  he  thinketh  Hymselfe  inferior 
to  her  because  he  is  her  Louer,  and  supe 
rior  to  all  Men  els  for  the  same  silly  Rea 
son.  —  ANATOMIE  OF  LOUE. 

To  any  sensitive  man,  not  yet  armored 
by  the  indifference  that  comes  of  being 
33 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

married  himself,  there  is  cause  for  appre 
hension  in  the  prospect  of  meeting  for 
the  first  time  that  person,  male  or  fe 
male,  whom  somebody  he  knows  and 
loves  has  recently  agreed  to  marry. 
The  event,  when  it  comes,  is  unavoid 
able,  nor  is  there  any  period  in  adult  life 
when  it  may  not  happen,  or  anybody  we 
know  so  old  that  he  or  she  may  not  oc 
casion  it.  Fact  is  more  romantic,  or  at 
any  rate  remains  romantic  much  later  in 
life,  than  fiction.  Only  the  other  day  I 
read  in  the  newspaper  of  a  man  of  one 
hundred  and  thirty-five  years  who  had 
just  subjected  his  little  circle  to  this 
formality.  Very  likely  the  newspaper 
exaggerated,  but  the  case  undermines 
the  security  that  one  ordinarily  feels  in 
his  relationship  with  the  ageing. 

Now  it  needs  no  argument  that  to  be 
happy  in  the  happiness  of  others  is  an 
inexpensive   pleasure   and   well   worth 
34 


ON  MEETING  THE  BELOVED 

cultivating.  Other  things  being  equal, 
one  should  go  dancing  and  singing  to  his 
first  meeting  with  another's  beloved. 
Bright-colored  flowers,  be  she  sixteen  or 
sixty,  should  blossom,  to  his  imagina 
tion,  from  the  granite  curb  along  his 
way;  and,  though  a  foolish  convention 
may  repress  the  song  and  dance,  yet 
should  he  walk  as  if  shod  with  the  most 
levitating  heels  ever  made  from  the  live 
liest  of  live  rubber,  and  sing  merrily  in 
his  heart. 

But,  thus  to  enter  into  the  happiness 
of  another,  one  must  see  and  feel,  as  if 
for  himself,  some  good  and  sufficient 
reason  for  that  happiness;  and  the  deep, 
insoluble  mystery  essential  to  all  proper 
betrothals  is  that  this  good  and  suf 
ficient  reason  is  not  necessarily  visible: 
these  two  are  happy-mad,  and  how  shall 
anybody  who  is  sane  enter  into  their 
lunacy? 

35 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

Mr.  Harvey  Todd,  2d,  —  to  take 
the  first  name  that  comes  to  mind,  — 
has  become  engaged  to  Miss  Margaret 
Lemon;  Miss  Lemon  to  Mr.  Todd.  Well 
and  good.  Nature,  which,  for  some  rea 
son  that  mankind  has  long  curiously  and 
vainly  sought  to  penetrate,  wishes  to 
continue  the  human  race,  is,  one  may 
believe,  reasonably  well  satisfied.  It  is 
one  job  among  many.  But  the  satisfac 
tion  of  Mr.  Todd  and  Miss  Lemon,  if  it 
could  be  put  to  such  haberdashery  use, 
would  girdle  the  Equator,  and  the  ends, 
tied  in  a  true  lover's  knot,  would  flutter 
beyond  the  farthest  visible  star.  Men 
and  women  have  become  engaged  in  the 
past;  men  and  women  will  become  en 
gaged  in  the  future;  but  this  engage 
ment  of  Harvey  Todd  and  Margaret 
Lemon  is  and  will  ever  remain  unique  — 
and  so  whoever  is  now  called  upon  to  ap 
praise  one  party  to  this  wonder  and  con- 
36 


ON  MEETING  THE  BELOVED 

gratulate  the  other,  may  well  be  trou 
bled.  He  is  not  so  much  afraid  of  what 
he  may  do  and  say,  —  for  any  man  may 
hope  to  achieve  a  hard,  quick,  almost 
sobbing  pressure  of  the  hand  and  a  few 
muttered  words,  —  as  of  the  way,  in 
spite  of  himself,  that  he  will  look  when 
he  does  and  says  it;  there,  indeed,  the 
amateur  actor  profits  by  his  hobby. 
There  is,  to  be  sure,  the  saving  chance 
that  Miss  Lemon  (or  Mr.  Todd)  may  so 
pleasurably  affect  him  that  the  ordeal 
will  be  less  difficult  than  he  anticipates : 
there  is  even  the  rare  chance  that  he 
may  instantly  and  completely  agree  with 
Mr.  Toad's  estimate  of  Miss  Lemon;  but 
this  is  the  happy-madness  itself,  and 
certainly  not  desirable  under  the  cir 
cumstances.  There  is  the  possibility, 
even  more  rare  and  less  desirable,  that 
Miss  Lemon,  seeing  him  for  the  first 
time,  will  instantly  and  completely  prefer 
37 


203745 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

him  to  Mr.  Todd.  There  is  the  possibil 
ity  that  he  may  recoil  with  horror  from 
Miss  Lemon  (or  Mr.  Todd),  or  be  re 
coiled  from,  or  that  both  may  recoil  si 
multaneously,  falling  over,  figuratively, 
on  their  backs,  and  being  picked  up  and 
carried  away  unconscious,  and  in  op 
posite  directions,  by  surprised  onlookers. 
His  whole  nature  may,  in  short,  instinc 
tively  run  toward,  or  away  from,  the 
beloved;  and  between  these  extremes 
lies  a  gamut  of  intermediary  emotions, 
which  at  the  moment  he  would  hardly 
wish  to  uncover.  This  stiff  and  geomet 
rical  smile,  he  asks  himself  at  the  worst, 
can  it  deceive  anybody?  this  hypocrit 
ical  mutter  of  congratulation,  does  it 
proceed  from  his  own  or  an  ice  chest? 
Nor  is  he  much  relieved  when  Mr.  Todd 
or  Miss  Lemon,  as  the  case  may  be, 
proves  how  genuine  appeared  his  smile, 
how  sincere  his  mutter,  by  asking  him  in 
38 


ON  MEETING  THE  BELOVED 

affectionate  detail  what  he  thinks  of  the 
other  —  a  procedure  which  should  be 
legally  forbidden  the  newly  engaged, 
under  penalty  of  being  refused  a  mar 
riage  license  for  at  least  ten  years. 

This  state  of  mind  in  lovers,  so  impor 
tant  to  those  who  are  called  upon  to 
meet  the  beloved  for  the  first  time,  has 
engaged  the  attention  of  essayists,  con 
versationalists,  and  philosophers.  ' '  They 
fall  at  once,"  wrote  Stevenson,  "into 
that  state  in  which  another  person  be 
comes  to  us  the  very  gist  and  centre 
point  of  God's  creation,  and  demolishes 
our  laborious  theories  with  a  smile;  in 
which  our  ideas  are  so  bound  up  with 
the  one  master-thought,  that  even  the 
trivial  cares  of  our  own  person  become 
so  many  acts  of  devotion,  and  the  love 
of  life  itself  is  translated  into  a  wish  to 
remain  in  the  same  world  with  so  pre 
cious  and  desirable  a  fellow  creature. 
39 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

And  all  the  while  their  acquaintances 
look  on  in  stupor." 

"  No, sir,"  said  Dr.  Johnson,  promptly 
improving  Mr.  Boswell's  milder  asser 
tion  that  love  is  like  being  enlivened 
with  champagne,  "No,  sir.  Admiration 
and  love  are  like  being  intoxicated  with 
champagne"  —  an  opinion,  one  hopes, 
that  will  not  some  day  be  made  the 
basis  of  a  nation-wide  campaign  to  pro 
hibit  falling  in  love. 

"His  friends,"  said  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson,  "find  in  her  a  likeness  to  her 
mother,  or  her  sisters,  or  to  persons  not 
of  her  blood.  The  lover  sees  no  resem 
blance  except  to  summer  evenings  and 
diamond  mornings,  to  rainbows  and  the 
song  of  birds." 

Mr.  Todd  and  Miss  Lemon  (so  like  a 
rainbow)  are  impervious  to  any  lack  of 
enthusiasm  that  you  or  I,  dear,  unself 
ish,  sensitive  reader,  may  fear  to  exhibit 
40 


ON  MEETING  THE  BELOVED 

when  either  leads  us  the  other  by  the 
hand  and  says,  "This  is  IT."  Ours,  if 
any,  will  be  the  suffering.  It  may  even 
happen  that  Miss  Lemon  or  Mr.  Todd 
—  Mr.  Todd  or  Miss  Lemon  beaming 
consent  and  approval  —  will  suggest 
that  we  call  her  (or  him)  Margaret  (or 
Harvey) . 

Yet  from  another  point  of  view,  but 
this  is  a  selfish  one,  apprehension  is 
justified  in  proportion  to  the  sensitive 
man's  previous  intimacy  with  the  indi 
vidual  whose  beloved  he  is  about  to 
meet.  For  until  that  meeting  is  over, 
"previous"  is  the  word  for  it:  whatever 
opinion  the  beloved  may  form  of  him 
will  determine  the  degree  and  manner  of 
its  continuance.  If  Miss  Lemon  disap 
proves  of  him,  though  Mr.  Todd  has 
hitherto  loved  him  as  Damon  did  Py 
thias,  all  is  over;  if  Mr.  Todd  disap 
proves  of  him,  though  he  has  known 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

Miss  Lemon  from  her  perambulator,  all 
is  over.  A  pale  ghost,  he  may,  in  either 
case,  sometimes  hang  his  spectral  hat 
in  the  Todd  hallway,  and  even  extend 
his  phantom  legs  under  the  Todd  ma 
hogany;  but  ALL  is  OVER.  Divinely 
harmonious  as  they  seem,  these  two  will 
never  agree  to  let  him  try,  however  hum 
bly  and  conscientiously,  to  cultivate  the 
inexpensive  pleasure  of  being  happy  in 
their  happiness.  He  becomes  what  no 
self-respecting  man  can  wish  to  be  —  a 
fly  in  the  ointment.  Most  cases,  fortu 
nately,  are  not  so  serious:  he  will  be  given 
a  reasonable  chance  to  make  a  place  for 
himself  on  this  new  plane  to  which  Mr. 
Todd  and  Miss  Lemon  have  been  trans 
lated  ;  but  it  is  always  a  question  whether 
he  can  enter  that  plane  himself,  or  must 
hereafter  be  content  with  hearing  from 
his  former  friend  through  a  medium. 
For  he  has  not,  as  is  so  often  gracefully 
42 


ON  MEETING  THE  BELOVED 

but  emptily  said  on  these  trying  occa 
sions,  been  enriched  by  the  acquisition 
of  a  new  friend :  he  has  simply  exchanged 
Miss  Lemon  or  Mr.  Todd  (as  the  case 
may  be)  for  a  composite,  a  Toddlemon 
or  a  Lemontodd  —  a  few  years  will 
show  which.  He  must  make  the  best  he 
can  of  that  composite.  He  who  was  for 
merly  described  as  (let  us  say)  "my 
friend,  Mr.  Popp,"  becomes,  if  he  be 
comes  at  all,  "our  friend,  Mr.  Popp"; 
and  if  ever  he  hears  himself  being  in 
troduced  as  "Mr.  Todd's  friend,  Mr. 
Popp,"  or  as  "Mrs.  Todd's  friend,  Mr. 
Popp,"  he  had  better  go  away  as  soon 
as  politeness  permits,  and  never  come 
back.  Never. 

I  speak,  of  course,  in  generalities;  for 
there  are  no  rules  immutably  governing 
all  cases,  and  life  is  mellowed  and  beau 
tified  by  shining,  sensible  examples,  in 
which  Mr.  Todd  and  Miss  Lemon  be- 
43 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

come  one,  yet  realize  that  in  many 
respects,  being  human,  they  must  still 
remain  two;  then,  indeed,  the  congrat- 
ulator  may  actually  be  enriched  by  the 
acquisition  of  a  new  friend  —  but  not 
instantly,  as  one  is  enriched  by  the  ac 
quisition  of  a  new  hat.  Yet  it  is  always 
the  wiser  part,  in  preparing  to  meet  a 
beloved,  to  prepare  for  the  worst. 

These  are  evidently  the  apprehen 
sions  of  a  bachelor,  sensitive  but  not  un 
selfish;  the  mental  attitude  is  different 
with  a  student,  philosopher,  and  ideal 
ist  who,  thinking  not  of  himself,  con 
templates  another's  marriage  in  the 
calm,  intelligent  way,  having  as  yet  no 
beloved  in  which  he  can  contemplate 
his  own.  Such  a  one  weighs.  Such  a  one 
is  conscious  that,  little  as  he  knows  the 
beloved  of  Mr.  Todd  or  Miss  Lemon, 
there  is  grave  danger  that  Mr.  Todd 
knows  Miss  Lemon,  or  Miss  Lemon  Mr. 
44 


ON  MEETING  THE  BELOVED 

Todd,  hardly  better.  This  happy-mad 
ness  may  not  only  be  a  delusion,  as  a 
calm  outside  intelligence  contemplates 
it,  but  it  may  be  a  snare.  Mistakes  do 
happen.  There  are  known  cases  in 
which  the  happy  lunatic  has  been  mis 
taken  in  a  beloved  not  once  but  often; 
and  the  persistent  effort  of  these  poor 
madmen  and  madwomen  to  correct  one 
mistake  by  making  another  is  one  of  the 
most  discussed  and  pitiable  phases  of 
our  civilization.  The  calm  intelligence 
must  balance  also  the  practical  aspects 
of  the  business,  its  risks  and  liabilities  as 
well  as  its  profits ;  and  so  serious  is  the 
enterprise  when  thus  examined  that  he 
can  hardly  fail  to  be  terrified  for  any 
body  he  knows  and  loves  who  is  under 
taking  it. 

O  Harvey!  Harvey!  (or  Margaret! 
Margaret !) 

Tact  is  what  he  will  pray  for.  And  if 
45 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

his  prayer  is  granted,  when  Mr.  Todd 
(or  Miss  Lemon)  asks  him,  "Now,  hon 
estly,  what  do  you  think  of  her  (or 
him)?"  he  will  say,  "Of  course  I  do  not 
know  Miss  Lemon  (or  Mr.  Todd)  very 
well  yet,  but  I  have  never  met  anybody 
whom  I  hoped  to  know  and  like  better." 
Which  will  be  quite  true,  and  please  the 
twittering  questioner  much  more  than 
if  he  said,  "Oh,  I  don't  know.  I  don't 
know." 


IV 
THIS  IS  A  FATHER 

Proud  Parent,  in  this  little  life 

Yourself  reflected  see, 
And  think  how  Baby  will  progress 

A  man  like  you  to  be! 

So  stout,  so  strong,  so  wise,  and  when 
Sufficient  years  have  flown, 

Like  you  the  happy  parent  of 
A  baby  of  his  own! 

And  when  that  unborn  baby  grows 

To  be  a  man  like  you, 
Oh,  think  how  proud  that  man  will  be 

To  be  a  parent  too. 

So  think,  when  life  oppresses  you 

And  you  are  feeling  sad, 
A  million,  million,  million  times 
You  'II  be  a  happy  dad. 

—  THE  FATHER'S  ANTHEM. 
47 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

IN  the  life  of  man  fatherhood  is  so 
likely  to  happen,  that  I  wonder  Shake 
speare  did  not  select  father  as  a  natural, 
and  indeed  inevitable,  successor  to  lover 
in  his  well-known  seven  ages.  He  chose 
the  soldier,  "full  of  strange  oaths,  and 
bearded  like  the  pard,"  presumably  be 
cause  such  soldiers  were  common  in 
Elizabethan  London.  But  fathers  must 
have  been  more  so :  they  must  have  gone 
in  droves  past  the  tavern  window 
where  Shakespeare  (as  what  we  now  call 
the  "wets"  so  like  to  think)  sat  at 
his  ale-stained  table,  dipping  now  his 
quill  in  an  inkwell,  and  again  his  nose  in 
a  tankard ;  but  they  seem  to  have  made 
no  impression.  Indeed  this  unromantic, 
necessary  figure,  composite  as  it  is  of  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  has  never 
appealed  strongly  to  the  poets ;  perhaps 
it  is  their  revenge  because  fathers  so  sel 
dom  read  poetry. 

48 


THIS  IS  A  FATHER 

Whatever  else  a  man  does,  whether  he 
lives  by  banking  or  burglary,  ascends  to 
the  presidency  or  descends  to  the  gutter, 
he  is  likely  to  be  a  father:  they  are  as 
countless  as  the  pebbles  on  a  beach  or 
the  leaves  in  Vallombrosa,  and  the  few 
who  evade  paternity  evade  also  the  pur 
pose  for  which  nature  evidently  created 
them,  and  go  through  life  thumbing  their 
noses,  so  to  speak,  at  Divine  Providence. 
So  taken  for  granted  is  this  vocation 
of  fatherhood,  and  so  little  considered 
in  comparison  with  other  masculine 
employments,  that  no  correspondence 
school  offers  a  course,  and  many  a  young 
man  undertakes  to  raise  children  with 
less  hesitation  than  he  would  start  in 
to  raise  chickens.  Some  accept  father 
hood  with  joy,  others  with  resignation, 
like  a  recently  wedded  young  Italian 
who  cobbles  my  shoes,  and  spoke  the 
other  day  of  his  own  new  little  one. 
49 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

"Zee  f adder  and  zee  modder,"  he  said, 
"zey  work  and  zey  slave  for  zee  leetle 
one.  But  what-a  good?  When  he  is 
grow  up,  he  say,  '  To  hell  wiz  zee  fadder 
and  zee  modder!'"  And  so,  as  Shake 
speare  may  have  decided,  there  is  no  uni 
versal  type  of  fatherhood,  nor  has  the 
imagination  of  mankind  created  one,  as 
in  the  case  of  mothers,  for  convenient 
literary  and  conversational  use.  The 
lines  of  the  balladist,  — 

With  his  baby  on  his  knee 
He 's  as  happy  as  can  be,  — 

were,  to  be  sure,  something  in  this  di 
rection  ;  but  they  have  become  so  wholly 
associated  with  humor,  that  even  the 
late  Mr.  Rogers,  had  he  known  the  bal 
lad,  could  hardly  have  found  inspiration 
therein  for  a  group;  nor  Shakespeare 
adapted  the  lines  to  describe  seriously 
one  of  his  seven  ages.  He  might  have 
scribbled  experimentally,  — 
50 


THIS  IS  A  FATHER 

Then  the  father, 
Infant  on  knee,  and  happy  like  the  clam,  — 

but  that  would  have  been  the  end  of  it. 
He  would  have  crossed  out  the  experi 
ment,  and  taken  another  drink. 

Father,  in  fact,  follows  Mother,  in  the 
mind  of  the  general,  so  far  behind  that 
he  is  almost  invisible,  a  tiny  object  on 
red  wheels  at  the  end  of  a  string.  But 
the  little  fellow  carries  a  pocketbook: 
when  Mother  needs  money  she  pulls  in 
the  string,  and  he  comes  up  in  a  hurry. 
And,  as  is  usually  the  case  with  popular 
conceptions,  this  odd,  erroneous  notion, 
which  most  fathers  seem  cheerfully 
enough  to  accept,  has  no  doubt  its  his 
toric  foundation,  and  derives  from  the 
unquestionable  supremacy  of  Mother  in 
the  beginning.  At  that  period,  indeed, 
it  is  hardly  to  be  expected  that  any 
father  should  feel  immediately  en  rap 
port  with  his  new-born  child,  or  become 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

intimately  associated  with  its  helpless, 
flower-like  life.  Ever  since  the  idea, 
which  has  now  so  long  lost  its  original 
element  of  bewildering  surprise,  yet 
remains  always  somewhat  surprising, 
first  dawned  upon  a  human  father  and 
mother  that  this  baby  belonged  to  them, 
conditions  have  inexorably  consigned 
the  infant  to  the  care  of  its  mother,  while 
its  father  pursued  elsewhere  the  equally 
necessary  business  of  providing  suste 
nance  for  the  family.  A  division  of  labor 
was  imperative :  somebody  must  stay  at 
home  in  the  cave  and  tend  the  baby, 
somebody  must  go  out  in  the  woods 
and  hustle  for  provisions.  Maternity 
was,  as  it  must  have  been,  already  a 
feminine  habit,  but  paternity  was  some 
thing  new  and  unexpected ;  and  although 
I  suspect,  in  many  cases,  this  astonish 
ing  discovery  was  followed  by  speedy 
flight.  Trueheart  the  First  took  up 
52 


THIS  IS  A  FATHER 

his  responsibilities  and  his  stone  axe 
together. 

The  horror  is  recorded  with  which 
Dr.  Johnson  regarded  the  idea  of  being 
left  alone  in  a  castle  with  a  new-born 
child;  and  this  feeling  in  so  civilized  a 
man  was  no  doubt  an  echo  of  the  emo 
tion  with  which  poor,  bewildered,  primi 
tive,  but  faithful  Trueheart  would  have 
envisaged  being  left  alone  in  the  cave 
with  his  new-born  baby :  the  sense  of  re 
lief,  of  gayety,  of  something  definite  and 
within  his  capabilities  to  do,  with  which 
the  young  father  nowadays  takes  his  hat 
and  starts  for  the  office,  must  be  much 
the  same  as  that  with  which  Trueheart 
took  his  stone  axe  and  started  for  the 
woods. 

Thus,  in  the  very  inception  of  the  hu 
man  family,  fatherhood  became  subordi 
nate  to  motherhood ;  and  so,  because  con 
ditions  after  all  have  not  fundamentally 
53 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

changed,  it  has  ever  since  continued. 
"Mothers'  Day,"  for  example,  is  cele 
brated  with  enthusiasm;  "Fathers' 
Day"  remains  a  mere  humorous  sug 
gestion,  a  kind  of  clown  in  the  editorial 
circus.  Then  as  now,  moreover,  in  the 
earlier  life  of  the  child,  Father,  although 
not  quite  as  useless  as  a  vermiform 
appendix,  was  and  is  of  very  little 
importance. 

I  am  not  forgetting  —  for  I  do  them 
an  honor  I  can  hardly  express  —  those 
fathers  who  walk,  all  through  the  night, 
back  and  forth,  back  and  forth,  back 
and  forth,  across  an  otherwise  silent 
room,  that  the  motion  incidental  to  their 
perambulation  may  soothe  a  mysteri 
ously  afflicted  babe  to  sleep;  nor  am  I 
unaware  that  Father  sometimes  pushes 
baby's  wicker  chariot,  pausing  ever  and 
anon  to  pick  up  and  restore  some  article 
of  infant  use  or  pleasure  that  the  little 
54 


THIS  IS  A  FATHER 

rascal  has  mischievously  thrown  over 
board,  and  in  many  other  touching  ways 
patiently  tries  to  make  himself  useful. 
These  offices  are  almost  impersonal. 
Any  father  could  perform  them  for  any 
baby:  a  mechanical  father,  ingeniously 
contrived  to  walk  back  and  forth,  push, 
or  pick  up  and  restore,  according  as  the 
operator  wound  him  up  and  pressed  the 
proper  button,  would  do  as  well.  Only 
in  proportion  as  the  child  begins  to  sit 
up  and  take  intelligent  notice  does 
Father's  position  become  responsible, 
important,  and  precarious.  From  that 
time  on,  his  behavior  has  consequences. 
Fatherhood,  in  fact,  is  a  mighty  seri 
ous  business  —  yet  even  to-day  many  a 
father  seems  to  have  made  no  more  con 
scious  preparation  for  it  than  had  our 
astonished  ancestor,  Trueheart.  My 
friend  Mr.  Todd,  for  example,  meets 
Miss  Margaret  Lemon  at  an  afternoon 
55 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

tea.  A  blind  attachment  (I  am  putting 
the  case  with  unimpassioned  simplicity, 
for  this  is  no  novel)  springs  up  (God 
knows  why)  between  them.  If  Harvey 
Todd  had  been  Faust,  Mephistopheles 
would  have  wasted  time  trying  to  tempt 
him  with  any  Margaret  but  a  Lemon; 
and  if  Miss  Lemon  had  been  that  other 
Margaret,  Mephistopheles  would  have 
had  to  produce  Harvey  Todd,  who,  I  am 
glad  to  believe,  would  have  promptly 
told  him  to  go  to  the  Devil. 

And  so  Mr.  Todd  becomes  engaged; 
and  after  a  decent  interval,  he  becomes 
a  husband ;  and  after  another  decent  in 
terval  he  becomes  a  father  —  and  who 
more  surprised  than  he!  Even  as  we 
congratulate  him,  clinking  together  the 
long-handled  spoons  that  come  in  the 
ice-cream  sodas  with  which  all  good  fel 
lows  now  celebrate  such  an  occasion,  it 
is  perfectly  evident  that  Harvey  Todd 
56 


THIS  IS  A  FATHER 

has  given  hardly  more  thought  to  the 
tremendously  important  and  interesting 
relation  of  father  and  son  than  might 
reasonably  have  been  expected  of  little 
Harvey,  Jr.  Mind  you,  I  do  not  attempt 
to  say  how  he  shall  conduct  himself: 
that  is  his  business ;  but  as  he  begins,  so 
is  he  likely  to  go  on  to  the  end  of  the 
chapter,  when  little  Harvey  is  no  longer 
a  roly-poly  human  plaything  but  a  great 
big  man  like  himself.  And  according  as 
he  has  conducted  himself,  that  great  big 
man  will  bless  him  or  curse  him  or  re 
gard  him  with  varying  degrees  of  affec 
tion  or  contumely.  If  he  has  never 
thought  of  it  before,  it  is  something  for 
him  to  think  about  now,  seriously,  in 
the  brief  respite  while  his  duties  are  per- 
ambulatory,  and  a  mechanical  father, 
cleaned,  oiled,  and  wound  up  once  a  day, 
would  do  just  as  well.  Fill  the  glasses 
again,  O  white-coated  Dispenser,  and 
57 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

make  mine  chocolate.  For  this  man  is  a 
father!  He  has  created  new  life,  or 
clothed  in  mortality  an  immortal  spirit 
(though  he  doesn't  know  which),  and 
here  he  stands,  —  I  said  chocolate,  — 
and  Solomon,  with  all  his  wisdom  and 
all  his  experience,  could  not  tell  him 
what  to  do  about  it. 

So  we  clink  our  long-handled  spoons. 

For  in  sober  truth,  as  one  reads  the 
reputed  wisdom  of  Solomon  on  this 
topic,  fatherhood  seems  to  be  in  a  state 
of  evolution  and  to  have  advanced  ma 
terially  since  he  was  a  father.  "He  that 
spareth  his  rod,"  said  Solomon  in  the 
complacent,  dogmatic  way  that  seems 
to  have  charmed  the  Queen  of  Sheba 
more  than  it  would  charm  me,  "hateth 
his  son:  But  he  that  loveth  him,  chas- 
teneth  him  betimes."  And  again,  "The 
rod  and  the  reproof  giveth  wisdom." 
We  know  better  nowadays :  the  rod  has 
58 


THIS  IS  A  FATHER 

become  a  figure  of  speech,  the  occasions 
that  even  appear  to  excuse  its  use  are 
fewer  and  fewer,  and  when  they  happen, 
the  modern  practice  may  be  described 
quite  simply  as  a  laying-on  of  the  hand. 
Here,  however,  is  something  objective 
for  a  father  to  do  —  an  occasion  when 
Mother  pulls  in  the  string,  and  Father, 
mercifully  hanging  back  on  his  red 
wheels,  comes  up  in  a  hurry,  and  what 
has  to  be  done  is  done.  But  the  proce 
dure,  over  the  centuries,  has  compelled 
thought ;  the  idea  has  ripened  slowly  in 
the  paternal  mind  that  it  is  an  unwise 
waste  of  strength  and  emotion  to  at 
tempt  at  one  end  what  may  be  better 
accomplished  at  the  other;  and  in  this 
revolutionary  discovery  there  must  have 
been  pioneers  whose  success  as  fathers 
was  measured  by  the  affection  and  re 
spect  of  worthy  sons.  Hamlet's  father, 
I  believe,  rarely,  if  ever,  spanked  young 
59 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

Hamlet,  and  never  in  such  mood  and 
manner  as  to  make  the  little  Prince  of 
Denmark  smart  at  the  injustice  of  the 
high-handed  proceeding.  Mr.  Todd  can 
do  no  better  than  follow  the  elder  Ham 
let's  example;  and  in  so  doing  he  will 
show  himself  wiser  than  Solomon,  with 
his  old-fashioned  insistence  on  proverbs 
and  a  stout  stick.  "He  that,  being  often 
reproved,  hardeneth  his  neck,"  said  Sol 
omon  (and  here  perhaps  is  the  origin  of 
the  phrase  to  "get  it  in  the  neck"), 
"shall  suddenly  be  broken,  and  that  be 
yond  remedy";  which  is  an  attitude  of 
mind  that  the  best  thought  certainly  no 
longer  considers  conducive  to  the  best 
fatherly  results.  The  book  for  Mr.  Todd 
to  read  is  not  Solomon's  Book  of  Prov 
erbs  but  Theodore  Roosevelt's  Letters 
to  his  Children. 

If  Solomon  had  been  right,  fatherhood 
would  be  easy;  but  the  simple  fact  that 
60 


THIS  IS  A  FATHER 

even  you  or  I,  gentle  Reader,  being 
often  reproved,  will  harden  our  necks, 
reveals  the  widespread  tendency  to  ossi 
fication  that  has  gradually  discredited 
the  didactic  and  strong-arm  system.  If 
I  may  compose  a  proverb  myself  — 

The  wise  man  maketh  no  enemy  of  his  neighbor; 
And  the  wise  father  maketh  a  friend  of  his  son. 

But  it  is  easier  to  compose  a  proverb 
than  to  apply  it,  and  friendship,  which 
can  be  built  only  on  a  good  foundation 
of  common  understanding  and  truthful 
speech,  is  here  especially  difficult.  "To 
speak  truth,"  says  Stevenson,  "there 
must  be  a  moral  equality  or  else  no 
respect;  and  hence  between  parent 
and  child  intercourse  is  apt  to  degen 
erate  into  a  verbal  fencing  bout,  and 
misapprehensions  to  become  ingrained. 
And  there  is  another  side  to  this ;  for  the 
parent  begins  with  an  imperfect  notion 
of  the  child's  character,  formed  in  early 
61 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

years  or  during  the  equinoctial  gales  of 
youth;  to  this  he  adheres,  noting  only 
the  facts  that  suit  with  his  preconcep 
tions;  and  wherever  a  person  fancies 
himself  unjustly  judged,  he  at  once  and 
finally  gives  up  the  effort  to  speak 
truth." 

Somehow  or  other  our  Mr.  Todd,  if  he 
wishes  to  make  the  best  of  his  paternity, 
must  overcome  the  handicap  imposed 
by  his  wider  mental  experience  and 
his  acquired  moral  distinctions  between 
Tightness  and  wrongness;  somehow  or 
other  he  must  create  in  Harvey,  Jr.,  an 
affectionate  regard  for  his  jolly  old  fa 
ther  that  shall  make  it  a  line  of  least  re 
sistance  for  the  little  fellow  to  follow  and 
imitate  his  jolly  old  father's  opinions 
and  wishes.  Often,  indeed,  if  he  is  wise, 
Mr.  Todd  will  dare  to  seem  foolish. 
"Foolishness,"  said  Solomon,  "is  bound 
up  in  the  heart  of  the  child"  —  and 
62 


THIS  IS  A  FATHER 

there  he  stopped,  after  adding  his  usual 
suggestion  about  the  rod  as  a  remedy. 
But  it  is  bound  up  also,  O  Solomon,  in 
every  heart  that  beats,  and  is  one  thing 
at  least  that  Mr.  Todd  and  little  Harvey 
have  in  common  to  start  with. 

And  so  the  father  plays  his  unap- 
plauded  part  —  "tragedy,  comedy,  his 
tory,  pastoral,  pastoral-comical,  histori 
cal-pastoral,  tragical-historical,  tragi 
cal-comical-historical-pastoral  ,  scene 
individable,  or  poem  unlimited,"  as  Po- 
lonius  might  enumerate.  He  wants  no 
applause.  He  wants  no  "Father's  Day." 
He  wants  no  statue.  He  wants  no  ad 
vice.  Yet  it  seems  to  me  that  a  figure 
and  character  has  lately  been  perpetu 
ated  in  statuary  of  various  kinds  that 
answers  all  practical  purposes,  though 
most  of  us  think  of  the  original  as  a 
Great  American  rather  than  as  a  Great 
Father. 


ON  BEING  A  LANDLORD 

In  an  informal,  but  practical  way,  a 
landlord  is,  and  must  be,  a  Justice  oj  the 
Domestic  Peace.  If  one  tenant  murders 
another  tenant,  the  case  passes  beyond  his 
jurisdiction:  he  has  no  power  of  the  black 
cap.  But  if  one  tenant  annoys  another 
(which  may  eventually  lead  to  homicide 
more  or  less  justifiable] ,  the  case  comes  to 
his  court:  he  is  both  jury  and  judge,  and 
can  in  extremity  pronounce  sentence  of 
eviction.  But  so  many  and  subtile  are  the 
ways  in  which  tenants  annoy  each  other 
that  to  be  a  perfectly  just  landlord  would 
demand  a  wisdom  greater  than  Solomon's. 
—  APARTMENTS  TO  LET. 

ON  my  consciousness  are  impressed 
the  names  of  fourteen  married  women 
64 


ON  BEING  A  LANDLORD 

and  one  (so  far  as  I  know)  unmarried 
man:  Mrs.  Murphy,  Mrs.  Smith,  Mrs. 
Brown,  Mrs.  Cawkins,  Mrs.  Trolley, 
Mrs.  Karsen,  Mrs.  Le  Maire,  Mrs.  Bar 
ber,  Mrs.  Sibley,  Mrs.  Carrot,  Mrs.  Ma- 
honey,  Mrs.  Hopp,  Mrs.  Ranee,  Mrs. 
Button,  and  Charlie  Wah  Loo.  Their 
husbands  I  hardly  know  at  all ;  indeed,  if 
Mrs.  Carrot  should  introduce  Mr.  Hopp 
to  me  by  that  dear  title,  —  as,  for  ex 
ample,  'my  husband,  Mr.  Hopp,'  —  I 
should  hastily  readjust  my  ideas  and 
decide  that  Mrs.  Carrot  was  really  Mrs. 
Hopp,  and  Mrs.  Hopp  really  Mrs.  Car 
rot.  Charlie  Wah  Loo  may  be  married ; 
he  devotes  his  days  to  the  washtub  and 
ironing-board,  and  his  nights  (I  like 
to  think)  to  what  Mr.  Sax  Rohmer, 
author  of  "The  Yellow  Claw,"  mysteri 
ously  mentions  as  "ancient,  unnamable 
evils."  In  feudal  times,  however,  I 
should  have  known  them  all  better. 
65 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

Tramp!    Tramp!    Tramp!   that  brave 
little  company  — 

BUTTON  RANEE 

HOPP  MAHONEY 

CARROT  SIBLEY 

BARBER  LE  MAIRE 

KARSEN  TROLLEY 

CAWKINS  BROWN 

SMITH  MURPHY 

—  would  have  marched  sturdily  under 
my  banner,  each  in  his  stout  leathern 
jerkin,  manfully  carrying  his  trusty  pike, 
halberd,  long  bow,  short  bow,  or  arba 
lest;  and  with  them  Charlie  Wah  Loo 
would  have  trotted  along  by  himself  as 
an  interesting  human  curiosity  —  or, 
perhaps,  in  a  cage.  Each  in  his  time 
would  have  done  me  fealty,  saying, 
"Know  ye  this,  my  lord,  that  I  will  be 
faithful  and  true  unto  you,  and  faith  to 
you  will  bear  for  the  tenements  which 
I  claim  to  hold  of  you ;  and  that  I  will 
lawfully  do  to  you  the  customs  and 
services  which  I  ought  to  do  at  the 
66 


ON  BEING  A  LANDLORD 

terms  assigned.  So  help  me  God  and 
his  saints." 

Those,  in  retrospect,  were  pleasant 
days  for  the  landlord,  when  rent  was 
paid  in  loyal  service  and  a  few  dozen 
eggs,  or  what  not.  But  all  that  now 
remains  of  the  ancient  custom  is  that 
they  continue,  vicariously,  through  the 
agency  of  their  beloved  helpmates,  to 
pay  me  rent.  In  this  sense,  Charlie  Wah 
Loo,  with  his  washtub  and  irons,  is  his 
own  beloved  helpmate. 

Briefly,  I  am  a  landlord.  But  do  not 
hate  me,  gentle  reader,  for  I  am  of  that 
mild,  reticent,  and  reluctant  kind  to 
whom  even  collecting  the  rent,  to  say 
nothing  of  raising  it,  is  more  a  pain  than 
a  pleasure.  There  are  such  landlords, 
products  of  evolution,  inheritance,  and 
a  civilization  necessarily  based  on  bar 
ter.  Our  anxious  desire  is  to  exact  no 
more  than  a  "fair  rent" ;  at  our  weakest, 
67 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

when  a  tenant  gets  in  arrears  and,  evi 
dently  enough,  cannot  catch  up,  our  line 
of  least  resistance  would  be  to  go  quietly 
away  and  leave  that  tenement  to  the 
tenant,  his  heirs  and  assigns  forever.  It 
is  unpleasant,  and  becomes  more  so 
every  time,  to  remind  him  that  he  owes 
us  money.  Only  the  inexorable  harsh 
ness  of  our  own  overlords  compels  us, 
hating  ourselves  the  while,  to  be  strict. 
I  have  seen  it  stated  as  a  scientific  de 
duction  that  "in  the  beginning  man 
probably  dwelt  in  trees  after  the  fashion 
of  his  ape-like  ancestors.  He  lived  on 
nuts,  fruits,  roots,  wild  honey,  and  per 
haps  even  bird's  eggs,  grubs  from  rotten 
wood,  and  insects."  And  my  own  expe 
rience  leads  me  to  feel  that  there  was 
much  to  be  said  for  this  way  of  life, 
though  I  draw  the  line  at  birds'  eggs, 
grubs  from  rotten  wood,  and  insects,  at 
which  items  of  an  earlier  menu  even  the 
68 


ON  BEING  A  LANDLORD 

scientific  mind  seems  to  baulk.  But  it 
may  well  have  happened  that  some 
strong  fellow  presently  got  possession  of 
an  especially  desirable  tree,  and  allowed 
others  to  share  its  branches  only  if  they 
kept  him  supplied  with  provisions.  Thus 
may  landlordry  have  been  established. 

Millions  of  years  have  passed  since 
then,  —  a  mere  flicker  in  the  great  movie 
of  eternity,  —  and  we  are  still,  many  of 
us,  living  in  trees;  but  the  trees  have 
been  cut  down  and  made  into  houses,  of 
which  at  present  there  are  not  enough 
to  go  round.  We  have  outgrown  our 
simple  arboreal  diet,  developed  and  per 
fected  the  hen  (no  small  achievement  in 
itself),  invented  underwear,  and  in 
countless  other  cunning  ways  have  cre 
ated  a  complex  civilization.  Century  by 
century,  generation  by  generation,  we 
have  acquired  tastes  and  conventions 
that  prevent  us  from  returning  to  the 
69 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

simple,  happy,  uncomplicated  life  of  our 
ape-like  ancestors.  And  in  this  civiliza 
tion  that  we  have  made,  the  figure  of 
the  landlord  bulks  large  and  overshad 
owing,  and  might,  indeed,  be  likened 
to  Rodin's  Thinker,  thinking,  in  this  in 
stance,  about  how  much  more  he  shall 
raise  the  rent.  One  must  assume,  of 
course,  that  he  is  thinking  about  it  just 
before  taking  his  morning  bath. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  dwell  upon 
those  disgraceful  landlords  who  prof 
iteer.  I  am  concerned  rather  with  the 
character  of  the  Perfect  Landlord,  a  just 
man,  respected,  if  not  loved  (within  rea 
son),  by  fourteen  married  women  and 
a.  Charlie  Wah  Loo.  But  this  admirable 
ideal  seems  impracticable.  I  know  a 
landlord  who  speaks  with  pleasure  of 
the  social  aspect  of  collecting  his  rents; 
but  his  is  a  selected  tenantry,  for  he  lets 
apartments  only  to  what  he  calls  "nice 
70 


ON  BEING  A  LANDLORD 

people,"  whose  society  he  feels  reason 
ably  certain  he  will  enjoy  on  rent-day, 
and  whose  financial  status,  he  also  feels 
reasonably  certain,  is  and  will  remain 
such  that  no  painful  embarrassment  on 
this  sordid  but  necessary  side  of  their  re 
lations  will  ever  cast  a  gloom  over  his 
visit.  Yet  even  so,  I  gather  that  there  are 
sometimes  breaks  in  the  golden  chain, 
when  the  nice  tenant  chats  with  a  too 
feverish  interest  about  life  and  things  in 
general,  and  the  sordid  aspect  cannot  be 
glossed  over  by  a  casual  "Ah,  yes,  the 
rent."  Such  breaks  in  the  golden  chain 
are  the  test  of  landlordry. 

I  am  reminded  of  a  little  one-act  play 
which  I  have  just  written  entitled 

THE   RENT 

CHARACTERS:  MRS.  BUTTON,  a  tenant. 

I,  a  landlord. 
SCENE:  A   tenement,   owned   by   I,   but 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

referred  to  as  MRS.  BUTTON'S,  which 
is  perhaps  more  correct. 
MRS.  BUTTON  is  washing  dishes.  The 
room  steams.  Slow  creaks  outside  as  of 
a  reluctant  man  coming  upstairs. 
MRS.  BUTTON  smiles  enigmatically.  A 
knocking  at  the  door,  as  in  "Macbeth'1 

MRS.  BUTTON.  Come  in.   (I  enters.} 

I  (laughing  with  affected  lightness}. 
Ah,  good-morning,  Mrs.  Button.  I've 
come  for  the  rent. 

MRS.  BUTTON  (weeping).  It's  not  me, 
as  ye  know,  sir,  that  likes  to  be  behind 
with  th'  rint.  I  'm  proud. 

I  (touched  in  spite  of  himself  by  the 
sight  of  a  strong  woman  in  tears}.  I  know 
that.  But  you've  been  here  seven 
months,  Mrs.  Button,  without  — 

MRS.  BUTTON  (wiping  her  eyes}.  Yis, 
I'm  an  old  tenant,  and  't  would  break 
me  heart  to  go.  An'  me  goin'  to  begin 
72 


ON  BEING  A  LANDLORD 

payin'  reg'lar  only  nixt  week,  sir.  It's 
th'  only  home  I've  got,  an'  it's  cruel 
harrd  to  leave  it. 

I  (sternly).  Very  well.  Very  well.  I 
shall  expect  the  money  next  week.  Good- 
day,  Mrs.  Button. 

MRS.  BUTTON.   Good-day,  sir. 
I  exits.    MRS.   BUTTON  resumes  wash 
ing  dishes,  smiling  enigmatically.    The 
room  steams,  and  steps  are  heard  going 
hastily  downstairs,  fainter  and  fainter. 

(CURTAIN) 

It  is  a  grave  responsibility  —  this 
power  to  dispossess  other  human  beings 
of  their  little  home  —  to  say  nothing  of 
the  recurrent  task  of  making  them  be 
have  themselves  in  it.  Perhaps,  on  some 
other  and  happier  plane  of  being,  all 
landlords  will  be  just  and  all  tenants 
reasonable  of  disposition  and  stable  of 
income.  Then,  indeed,  the  landlord 
73 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

need  have  nothing  in  common  with  a 
well-known  walrus,  of  whom  it  is  told 
that,  in  dealing  with  certain  oysters, 
"with  sobs  and  tears  he  sorted  out  those 
of  the  largest  size."  But  something 
might  even  now  be  done  by  compulsory 
psychopathic  —  I  had  nearly  said  psy- 
chopathetic  —  treatment ;  for  thus  the 
effort  to  solve  the  rent  problem  would 
go  to  the  soil  in  which  it  is  rooted,  and 
no  complicated  laws  would  be  needed. 
Landlords  and  tenants,  in  fact  every 
body,  would  have  to  take  the  treatment, 
—  including,  of  course,  the  psychopathic 
practitioners,  who  would  treat  each 
other,  —  but  it  would  be  a  fine  thing  for 
the  world  if  it  worked. 

One  sees  in  imagination  the  profiteer 
ing  landlord,  after  looking  long  and  in 
tently  at  a  bright  object,  say  a  five- 
dollar  gold-piece,  dropping  peacefully 
asleep ;  one  hears  the  voice  of  the  scien- 
74 


ON  BEING  A  LANDLORD 

tist  repeating,  firmly  and  monotonously, 
"When  you  wake  up  you  will  never 
want  anything  more  than  a  just  rent  — 
a  just  rent  —  a  just  rent  —  a  just  rent." 

One  sees  this  profiteering  landlord, 
once  more  wide  awake,  busy  at  his  desk 
with  pencil  and  paper,  scowling  con 
scientiously  as  he  endeavors  to  figure 
out  exactly  what  a  just  rent  will  be.  In 
vestment,  so  much;  taxes;  insurance; 
repairs;  laths  and  plaster  here,  wall-pa 
per  there ;  water,  light,  putty,  paint,  jan 
itor,  Policeman's  Annual  Ball,  postman 
at  Christmas,  wear  and  tear  on  land 
lord's  shoes,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.  —  now, 
if  ever,  there  is  a  tired  business  man. 

Or,  —  to  take  another  aspect  of  this 
great  reform,  —  there  is  the  sad  case  of 
Mrs.  Murphy,  who  can  no  longer  endure 
the  children  of  Mrs.  Trolley,  who  lives  in 
the  flat  above  her.  They  run  and  play, 
run  and  play;  they  produce  in  Mrs. 
75 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

Murphy  a  conviction  that  presently 
the  floor  will  give  way,  and  the  children, 
still  running  and  playing,  will  come 
right  through  on  her  poor  head.  Yet  it 
is  the  nature  of  children  to  run  and  play, 
run  and  play :  the  landlord  cannot,  try  as 
he  may,  persuade  Mrs.  Trolley  to  chain 
her  offspring.  So  away,  away  to  the  Pub 
lic  Psychopathic  Ward  with  poor  Mrs. 
Murphy.  "Madam,  when  you  awake, 
the  sound  of  running  feet  over  your  poor 
head  will  suggest  the  joys  of  innocent 
childhood,  and  you  will  be  very  happy 
when  they  run  and  play,  run  and  play — 
happy  all  day — run  and  play — run  and 
play  —  happy  all  day  —  run  and  play." 
But  alas,  so  far  even  psychopathic 
treatment  cannot  promise  to  stabilize 
incomes.  There  must  still  be  times  when 
the  just  landlord  must  say  to  his  tenant, 
"All  is  over  between  us;  we  must  part 
forever  —  and  at  once."  To  which, 
76 


ON  BEING  A  LANDLORD 

judging  by  the  tenor  of  some  of  the  laws 
that  have  lately  been  suggested,  the  ten 
ant  may  presently  answer,  "All  right, 
you  Old  Devil.  This  is  the  tenth  of 
the  month,  and  I'll  shake  the  dust  of 
your  disgraceful  premises  off  my  feet  two 
years  and  six  months  from  to-morrow." 
It's  a  puzzling  time  for  us  landlords. 
Not  long  ago  I  felt  compelled  to  raise  the 
rent  of  fourteen  married  women  and  one 
(so  far  as  I  know)  unmarried  Chinaman. 
And  then,  overcome  by  conscience,  I 
sat  down  and  figured  out  a  just  rent. 
And  when  I  had  finished  I  came  upon  a 
distressing  discovery.  I  had  raised  the 
rent  of  neither  Mrs.  Murphy,  Mrs. 
Smith,  Mrs.  Brown,  Mrs.  Cawkins, 
Mrs.  Trolley,  Mrs.  Karsen,  Mrs.  Le 
Maire,  Mrs.  Barber,  Mrs.  Sibley,  Mrs. 
Carrot,  Mrs.  Mahoney,  Mrs.  Hopp, 
Mrs.  Ranee,  Mrs.  Button,  nor  Charlie 
Wah  Loo,  anything  like  enough. 


VI 

OLD  FLIES  AND  OLD  MEN 

To-day,  my  dear,  I  greatly  astonished 
my  grandson  by  standing  on  my  head,  and 
by  entering  the  kitchen  by  turning  a  back- 
somersault  through  the  door  —  exercises 
which  I  frequently  practise  for  the  benefit 
of  my  digestion,  but  not  often  in  public. 
His  bewilderment  at  seeing  a  man  of  my 
years  perform  such  acrobatics  was  most 
comical.  But  there,  there,  one  must  amuse 
one's  self  with  the  young  sometimes.  I 
have  thought  more  or  less  seriously  of  ad 
vising  these  exercises  for  general  use;  but 
few  men  have  had  the  advantage  of  being 
brought  up  in  a  circus,  and  what  seems 
easy  to  me  would  no  doubt  present  insu 
perable  obstacles  to  most.  The  main 
thing,  after  all,  is  not  to  grow  old  before 
your  time,  because  the  silly  younger  gen- 
78 


OLD  FLIES  AND  OLD  MEN 

eration  likes  to  flatter  itself  by  thinking 
you  antediluvian. — LETTERS  OF  FATHER 
WILLIAM. 

FEW  men  read  Shakespeare,  and  so, 
fortunately  enough,  few  think  of  them 
selves  as  being  some  day  a  pantaloon  — 
lean  and  slippered  (as  Shakespeare  de 
scribed  this  sixth  age  of  man),  with 
spectacles  on  nose,  his  youthful  hose, 
well-saved,  a  world  too  wide  for  his 
shrunk  shank,  and  his  big,  manly  voice, 
turning  again  to  childish  treble,  operat 
ing  like  a  penny  whistle  when  he  tries  to 
converse.  But  the  Bard  made  a  bogey: 
at  any  rate,  there  are  fewer  pantaloons 
visible  than  there  probably  were  in  Eliz 
abethan  England;  and  the  sixth  age  of 
man  appears  more  logically  to  offer 
a  kind  of  Indian  summer  that  is  well 
worth  living  for.  Shakespeare,  it  seems 
to  me,  slipped  a  cog  in  his  sequence ;  and 
I  prefer  to  think  of  Cornaro,  the  Italian 
79 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

centenarian,  who  began  at  forty  to  re 
strict  his  diet  (though  this  I  care  less 
for),  and  wrote  of  himself  at  eighty- 
three:  "I  enjoy  a  happy  state  of  body 
and  mind.  I  can  mount  my  horse  with 
out  assistance;  I  climb  steep  hills;  and  I 
have  lately  written  a  play  abounding  in 
innocent  wit  and  humor.  And  I  am  a 
stranger  to  those  peevish  and  morose 
humors  which  fall  so  often  to  the  lot  of 
old  age." 

Granting  some  other  choice  of  mental 
employment,  —  for  writing  that  kind 
of  a  play  seems  nowadays  too  useless 
an  occupation  even  for  an  old  man's 
leisure,  —  this  is  the  kind  of  an  old  man 
I  should  like  to  be. 

In  the  light  of  recent  scientific  re 
search  with  flies,  Cornaro  probably  in 
herited  his  longevity  from  long-lived  an 
cestors,  and  would  have  done  about  as 
well  on  a  less  restricted  diet:  he  might 
80 


OLD  FLIES  AND  OLD  MEN 

reasonably  have  lasted  as  long  if  not  as 
comfortably.  Ideas  have  changed  since 
Pope  asked  himself,  — 

Why  has  not  man  a  microscopic  eye?  — 

and  promptly  answered,  — 

For  this  plain  reason,  Man  is  not  a  Fly. 

Say  what  the  use,  were  finer  optics  giv'n, 

T'  inspect  a  mite,  not  comprehend  the  heav'n? 

Man  since  then  has  provided  himself 
with  a  remarkably  good  microscopic  eye. 
He  has  inspected  the  mite,  and  discov 
ered  resemblances  between  this  inno 
cently  disgusting  little  insect  and  him 
self,  which  make  it  desirable,  in  some 
cases,  to  suspend  the  swatter,  and  study 
instead  of  assassinate.  Granting  that 
the  proper  study  of  mankind  is  Man, 
the  proper  study  of  mankind  is  Flies; 
for  the  days  of  a  fly  present  an  enter 
taining  and  instructive  parallel  to  the 
years  of  a  man :  a  seventy-year-old  man 
a.nd  a  seventy-day-old  fly  are  contem- 
81 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

poraries;  other  things  being  equal,  they 
might  almost  be  called  twins.  Confined 
in  glass  bottles  and  observed  impartially 
from  birth  to  burial,  each  baby  fly,  it  ap 
pears,  inherits  a  maximum  number  of 
days  on  this  perplexing  planet,  and  lives 
fewer  according  to  the  activity  with 
which  he  expends  his  inheritance.  If 
flies  had  copybooks  one  might  compose 
a  maxim  for  little  flies  to  copy,  — 

Do  not  fly  too  much  or  fast, 
And  you  will  much  longer  last. 

Thus  one  scientific  gentleman  has 
watched,  godlike,  the  lives  of  5836  flies 
—  3216  fair  flies  (if  I  may  so  call  them), 
and  2620  of  their  natural,  and  only, 
admirers  —  from  their  separate  birth- 
minutes  till  each  in  turn  paid  his  or  her 
little  debt  to  nature,  and  passed  away. 
It  is  an  odd  thing  to  contemplate  —  this 
self-election  of  a  man  to  the  positions  of 
guardian,  health  officer,  divine  provi- 
82 


OLD  FLIES  AND  OLD  MEN 

dence,  nursemaid,  matchmaker,  clergy 
man,  physician,  undertaker,  and  sexton 
to  5836  flies.  Yet  it  redounds  to  his 
credit,  and  is  another  proof  of  the  poet's 
contention  that  we  men  are  superior: 
for  what  fly  would  ever  think  of  studying 
MS  to  find  out  anything  about  himself? 
And,  by  deduction,  I,  like  the  little  fly, 
inherit  my  span  of  life,  although  either 
accident  or  a  germ  may  get  me  if  I  don't 
watch  out. 

But  even  if  man,  like  the  fly,  inherits 
his  individual  length  of  life,  he  will, 
again  like  the  fly,  go  on  living  it  with 
little  concern  as  to  whatever  invisible 
string  may  be  fastened  to  his  inherit 
ance.  He  will  think  hopefully  that  any 
ancestor  he  has  had  who  died  by  violence 
or  a  germ  might  othenvise  have  lived  to 
be  as  hale  and  hearty  as  Father  William, 
that  lively  sage  whose  habit  was  to 
stand  on  his  head  at  intervals,  and  to 
83 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

enter  a  door  by  turning  a  back-somer 
sault.  Heredity  is  still  a  mystery;  the 
ancestry  of  free  men  is  much  more  com 
plicated  than  that  of  flies  in  bottles; 
and  any  of  us,  if  he  anxiously  carried  his 
genealogical  research  far  enough  back, 
would  find  a  goodly  number  of  forbears, 
prematurely  carried  off,  from  whom  he 
might  reasonably  have  inherited  quite  a 
lot  of  what  the  scientific  mind  calls  the 
"hypothetical  substance  or  substances 
which  normally  prevent  old  age  and  nat 
ural  death."  Flies  growing  gracefully 
old  in  glass  bottles  therefore  need  not 
worry  us,  and  every  ancestor  who  has 
been  hanged  is  a  reason  for  optimism. 

And  there  is  another  reason  even  more 
valuable  than  a  pendent  ancestor.  You 
and  I,  gentle  Reader,  have  souls  (though 
there  may  be  times  of  discouragement 
when  we  wish  we  had  n't),  and  old  age 
is  a  mere  trivial  incident  in  our  jolly 
84 


OLD  FLIES  AND  OLD  MEN 

eternal  lives.  Willy-nilly,  we  begin 
growing  older,  by  the  conventional 
measurement  of  time,  with  our  first 
breath;  but  who  can  prove  that  we  are 
not  in  reality  very  much  older  than  we 
look  in  the  beginning,  and  very  much 
younger  than  we  look  in  the  end  ?  I  get 
these  sober  thoughts  from  the  labora 
tory  rather  than  the  pulpit,  from  evolu 
tion  rather  than  dogma.  O  aged  fly,  to 
whom  your  seventy  days  are  a  long  life 
and  your  glass  bottle  a  perfectly  natural 
and  normal  world  in  which  to  have  lived 
it!  O  aged  man,  to  whom  your  seventy 
years  are  a  long  life,  and  who  may  also 
have  lived  it,  for  all  you  know,  in  a  kind 
of  glass  bottle,  big  enough  to  contain 
comfortably  this  little  planet  and  all  the 
visible  stars!  Whoever  respects  age  for 
its  own  sake  must  impartially  salute  you 
both. 

"It  is  a  man's  own  fault,"  said  Dr. 
85 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

Johnson,  then  seventy  years  old,  but  no 
pantaloon,  "  it  is  from  want  of  use,  if  the 
mind  grows  torpid  in  old  age."  And  so 
plausible  is  this  observation,  that  any 
reasonably  intelligent  man  might  make 
it  to  his  wife  at  breakfast  without  at  all 
astonishing  her.  Here,  to  be  sure,  one 
gets  no  help  from  flies  in  glass  bottles 
who  depart  this  world  according  as  they 
fly  more  or  fly  less,  for  theirs  apparently 
is  a  democracy  in  which  no  outside 
observer  can  yet  say  that  any  one  fly 
thinks  more  or  thinks  less  than  another. 
A  scientific  study  of  5836  old  men  (in 
biographies  instead  of  bottles)  would 
very  likely  do  no  more  than  verify  the 
generalization  that  any  thinker  may 
make  at  breakfast.  And  this  being  the 
case,  civilization  tends  naturally  enough 
to  reduce  the  number  of  pantaloons. 
Universal  education,  books,  newspapers, 
magazines,  politics,  movies,  anything 
86 


OLD  FLIES  AND  OLD  MEN 

and  everything  that  to  any  degree  em 
ploys  and  exercises  the  mind,  postpones 
its  torpidity;  and  statistics  indicate  that 
an  increasing  proportion  of  babies  live  to 
be  middle-aged  people  —  but  a  decreas 
ing  proportion  of  middle-aged  people 
live  to  be  old  enough  to  become  panta 
loons.  For  many  a  not- so- very-promis 
ing  baby  survives  nowadays  who  would 
have  perished  under  earlier  conditions; 
and  many  a  man  gets  to  middle  life  who 
would  otherwise  be  dead  already,  and 
lacks  the  "pep,"  as  a  popular  magazine 
editor  might  say,  to  get  very  much 
further.  What  a  survival  of  the  fittest, 
for  example,  was  that  of  the  beautiful 
Galeria  Copiola,  who,  I  have  read,  made 
her  first  dazzling  appearance  in  the 
theatre  of  ancient  Rome  at  the  age  of 
ninety!  She  acted  and  danced;  and 
Roman  playgoers  of  seventy,  sitting  in 
the  front  rows,  had  opportunity  to  be- 
87 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

come  madly  infatuated  with  a  charmer 
twenty  years  their  senior,  such  as  now 
falls  only  to  the  lot  of  the  college  under 
graduate  or  the  tired  business  man. 
And  if  anybody  doubts  this  surprising 
youthfulness  of  Galeria,  I  offer  the  cor 
roborative  evidence  of  the  seventeenth- 
century  pamphlet,  "The  Olde,  Olde, 
very  Olde  Man;  or  the  Age  and  Long 
Life  of  Thomas  Parr,"  in  which  John 
Taylor,  the  Water  Poet,  describes  the 
pre-Adamite  who  was  brought  up  to 
London  at  the  age  of  152,  met  the  King, 
and  had  such  a  great  good  time  in  gen 
eral,  that  his  death  nine  months  later 
was  attributed  to  over-excitement. 

He  was  of  old  Pythagoras'  opinion 
That  green  cheese  was  most  wholesome  with  an  onion ; 
Coarse  meslin  bread,  and  for  his  daily  swig, 
Milk,  butter-milk,  and  water,  whey  and  whig: 
Sometimes  metheglin,  and  by  fortune  happy, 
He  sometimes  sipped  a  cup  of  ale  most  nappy. 

(I  have  looked  up  "metheglin,"  and  I 

find  it  to  have  been  a  "strong  liquor 

88 


OLD  FLIES  AND  OLD  MEN 

made  by  mixing  honey  with  water  and 
flavoring  it,  yeast  or  some  similar  fer 
ment  being  added,  and  the  whole  al 
lowed  to  ferment."  "Ale"  was  also  a 
liquor,  but  made  from  malt.  " Nappy" 
means  heady  and  strong:  "  Nappie  ale," 
says  an  old  writer,  was  "so  called  be 
cause,  if  you  taste  it  thoroughly,  it  will 
either  catch  you  by  the  nape  of  the  neck 
or  cause  you  to  take  a  nappe  of  sleepe." 
The  use  of  these  drinks,  it  may  still  be 
argued,  shortened  Parr's  life;  but  the 
fly-research  that  I  have  mentioned 
seems  to  indicate  that  their  tendency 
to  decrease  physical  activity  by  indu 
cing  "nappes"  may  have  materially 
helped  him  to  conserve  his  inheritance 
of  longevity.) 

But  these  cases  are  exceptional,  and 
for  my  part  I  have  no  desire  to  be  the 
Thomas  Parr  of  the  twentieth  or  twenty- 
first  century.    It  is  more  important  to 
89 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

live  right  (and  there,  indeed,  is  a  job  for 
anybody!)  than  to  live  long;  and  old 
age,  like  young  love,  is  often  oversenti- 
mentalized.  Mr.  Boswell,  I  think,  over- 
sentimentalized  it  when  he  asked  his 
long-suffering  friend,  "But,  sir,  would 
you  not  know  old  age?  .  .  .  I  mean,  sir, 
the  Sphinx's  description  of  it  —  morn 
ing,  noon,  and  night.  I  would  know 
night  as  well  as  morning  and  noon." 
And  the  doctor  restored  the  subject  to 
its  proper  place  when  he  answered: 
"Nay,  sir,  what  talk  is  this?  Would  you 
know  the  gout  ?  Would  you  have  decrep 
itude?"  He  might,  indeed,  have  gone 
further.  "Do  you  suppose,  sir"  (he 
might  have  added),  "you  will  know 
night  when  you  see  it?  Why,  sir,  what 
does  a  baby  know  about  morning?" 

So  with  Pantaloon:  we  comparative 
youngsters  have  only  an  external  and 
objective  idea  of  him  —  his  slippers,  his 
90 


OLD  FLIES  AND  OLD  MEN 

stockings,  his  peevish  and  morose  hu 
mors,  his  feeble  mirth  and  empty  gar 
rulity.  What  living  is  really  like  to  him 
we  cannot  know  until  we  are  pantaloons 
ourselves,  and  then,  mayhap,  we  shall 
have  forgotten  what  living  is  like  to  us 
now;  let  it  suffice  that  we  shall  prob 
ably  be  far  less  bothered  by  our  shrunk 
shanks  and  piping  voices  than  we  now 
believe  possible.  At  the  same  time,  it 
will  do  no  harm  for  some  of  us  to  ' '  watch 
our  step."  Already  I  —  and  there  must 
be  many  another  like  me  —  am  some 
times  a  little  peevish  and  a  little  morose ; 
a  mere  soupQon  reasonably  explainable 
by  natural  causes  —  but  there  it  is !  I 
am  hardly  aware  of  it  myself.  Yet  when 
it  is  called  to  my  attention  by  those  near 
est  and  dearest  to  me,  I  experience  an 
odd,  perverse  inclination  to  be  more 
peevish  and  more  morose  than  before. 
I  enjoy,  I  take  a  queer,  twisted,  unnat- 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

ural,  hateful,  demoniac  pleasure,  like 
Mr.  Hyde  when  Dr.  Jekyll  turned  into 
him,  in  the  idea  of  being  more  peevish 
and  more  morose.  Here  indeed  is  some 
thing  to  look  out  for:  resist  that  inclina 
tion,  and  we  are  laying  the  foundation 
of  a  serene  and  respected  old  age ;  obey 
that  impulse,  and  we  comfort  the  Devil, 
and  run  the  risk  of  some  day  becoming, 
not  only  old  men,  but  old  nuisances.  I 
do  not  know,  though  I  very  much  doubt, 
that  one  old  fly  is  ever  more  peevish  and 
morose  than  another  old  fly;  but  with 
mankind,  whose  superior  intelligence  so 
often  makes  trouble  for  his  associates, 
the  variations  are  visible.  Savages,  un 
hampered  by  the  conventions  of  an 
artificial  civilization,  have  efficiently 
knocked  their  elders  on  the  head  in 
consequence. 

Let  us,  then,  do  our  best  to  beat  the 
Devil,  and  prepare  for  that  Indian  sum- 
92 


OLD  FLIES  AND  OLD  MEN 

mer,  which,  with  all  respect  to  Shake 
speare,  is  the  true  sixth  age  of  man.  And 
they  reach  it  best  (to  judge  by  some  who 
have  got  there)  who  do  their  daily  work 
with  a  good  conscience,  share  their  in 
cidental  joys  with  others,  and  meet 
their  troubles  in  the  spirit  of  that  stout 
old  seaman,  Sir  Andrew  Barton,  as  I  the 
other  day  saw  his  ballad  quoted  with 
reference  to  R.  L.  Stevenson :  — 

A  little  I  me  hurt,  but  yett  not  slaine; 
He  but  lye  downe  and  bleede  a  while, 
And  then  He  rise  and  fight  againe. 


VII 
THE  OLDE,  OLDE,  VERY  OLDE  MAN 

Now  concernynge  the  Soule,  it  is  a 
Queer  Thynge  consydering  that  it  lives  in 
the  Bodie  yett  dieth  nott;  and  so  I  conclude 
that  the  Soule  was  made  separate,  and 
thys  Bodie  for  its  brief  use  and  tenement; 
and  how  it  gets  in  and  gets  oute  I  cannot 
tell  you.  And  belyke  there  bee  all  sortes 
and  condiciones  of  Soules,  some  goode, 
some  bad,  some  so-so;  but  because  Goode 
is  better  than  Evil,  and  because  they  lyve  in 
Eternity,  the  bad  Soules  willfinde  itt  oute 
in  time,  and  become  goode;  and  the  so-so 
Soules  will  learn  wisdome,  and  cease  of 
their  foolishnesse.  But  why  they  were  nott 
alle  made  alyke  to  start,  that  I  cannot  tell 
you;  nor  juste  how  they  was  made.  — 
THE  SAGE'S  OWNE  BOKE. 
94 


THE  OLDE,  OLDE,  VERY  OLDE  MAN 

IT  was  a  poetess,  I  am  glad  to  say, 
and  not  a  poet,  who  wrote  the  once  pop 
ular  lines:  — 

Backward,  flow  backward,  O  tide  of  the  years! 
I  am  so  weary  of  toil  and  of  tears,  — 
Toil  without  recompense,  tears  all  in  vain,  — 
Take  them,  and  give  me  my  childhood  again. 

Many  a  voice  no  doubt  sagged  under 
this  load  of  pathos  as  it  read  "  Rock  Me 
to  Sleep,  Mother"  to  a  little  group  of 
sympathetic  listeners;  but  if  such  mel 
ancholies  are  to  be  set  on  paper,  and 
circulated  in  print,  I  am  unchivalrous 
enough  to  wish  that  joyless  occupation 
on  the  gentler  sex.  Most  of  us  perform 
prodigies  of  toil,  which  seem  to  receive 
scant  recompense,  and  shed  figuratively 
many  a  bucket  of  seemingly  useless 
tears.  But  I  do  not  imagine  that  this 
sad  poetess  was  half  as  badly  off  as  she 
seemed  to  think;  and,  more  than  that, 
she  had  only  to  wait  long  enough,  and 
keep  alive  long  enough,  to  get  her  child- 
95 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

hood  back  without  asking  for  it.  Time, 
the  Grocery  man,  in  due  season  would 
hand  her  a  second  childhood  in  many  re 
spects  '  'just  as  good  "  as  the  first ;  for  we 
who  are  betwixt  and  between  can  ob 
serve  an  unintelligent  ignorance  of  later 
troubles  in  one  condition,  neatly  bal 
anced  by  an  unintelligent  forgetfulness 
of  them  in  the  other.  Our  lugubrious 
poetess,  one  might  say,  was  neither 
more  nor  less  than  asking  the  tide  of 
the  years  obligingly  to  assist  her  to  com 
mit  suicide.  Had  her  request  been  grant 
ed,  there  would  have  been  one  more 
child  in  the  world — and  one  less  poetess. 
An  impressive  parallel  may,  indeed, 
be  drawn  between  these  two  childhoods 
—  the  first  a  period  of  dependence  upon 
its  elders,  and  the  second  of  dependence 
on  its  youngers,  and  each,  to  the  reflec 
tive  observer,  a  pretty  evenly  balanced 
reversal  of  the  other.  It  is  as  if,  in  the 
96 


THE  OLDE,  OLDE,  VERY  OLDE  MAN 

beginning,  the  whole  family  of  recogniz 
able  human  characteristics,  Curiosity, 
Memory,  Affection,  Dislike,  Ambition, 
Love,  Hate,  Good  Nature,  Bad  Temper, 
and  all  the  rest  of  them,  were  moving, 
one  after  another,  into  a  new  house ;  and 
as  if,  in  the  end,  the  whole  family,  one 
after  another,  were  leaving  an  old  one. 
The  very  youngest  and  the  very  oldest 
men  in  the  world  seem  equally  equipped 
for  living  in  it  —  "sans  teeth,  sans  eyes, 
sans  taste,  sans  everything" ;  and  Baby, 
a  little  older,  when  he  goes  out  in  his 
perambulator  is  much  like  ancient 
Thomas  Parr  being  conveyed  to  London 
as  a  human  curiosity  in  a  "litter  and 
two  horses  (for  the  more  easy  carriage 
of  a  man  so  enfeebled  and  worn  with 
age).  .  .  .  And  to  cheere  up  the  olde 
man  and  make  him  merry,  there  was  an 
antique-faced  fellow,  called  Jacke,  or 
John  the  Foole." 

97 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

Why,  I  myself,  meeting  a  baby  in  a 
perambulator,  have  made  such  antic 
faces  that  I  might  fairly  have  been  called 
Jacke,  or  John  the  Foole,  by  anybody 
who  saw  me,  and  all  to  cheere  up  the 
younge  man  and  make  him  merry.  A 
little  older  yet,  the  child  will  run  and 
play,  rolling  his  hoop,  spinning  his  top, 
enjoying  the  excitement  of  tag  and  hide- 
and-go-seek;  and  I  dare  say  that  the  old 
man,  a  little  younger  than  before,  would 
be  just  as  happy  with  hoop  and  top  (if 
he  were  again  introduced  to  them) ,  and 
would  have  a  grand,  good  time  at  tag 
and  hidey-go  if  he  had  other  old  men 
and  old  women  to  play  with,  and  his 
youngers  would  let  him.  I  do  not  mean 
that  he  would  do  any  of  these  things  as 
well  as  the  child ;  but  it  would  please  him 
as  much  to  do  them  to  the  top  of  his 
aged  bent,  though  now  and  then  a  flicker 
of  remembered  convention,  which  the 
98 


THE  OLDE,  OLDE,  VERY  OLDE  MAN 

child  has  never  known  and  considered, 
would  make  him  self-consciously  aban 
don  these  simple  pleasures.  Even  as  an 
old  cat,  caught  trying  to  catch  its  tail, 
will  sit  up  with  dignity  and  pretend  that 
it  was  n't. 

There  was  once  a  custom  of  including 
a  skeleton,  or  perhaps  a  mummy,  in  the 
festivity  of  a  banquet,  to  remind  the 
diners  of  their  mortality,  and,  for  all  I 
know,  the  after-dinner  speakers  of  the 
shortness  of  time;  though  very  likely 
they  soon  got  used  to  their  silent  com 
panion,  and  took  their  mortality  as 
lightly  as  most  people  do  at  dinner.  An 
"Olde,  Olde,  very  Olde  Man,"  as  a  con 
temporary  writer  called  the  unpictur- 
esque  human  ruin  I  have  just  referred 
to,  would,  it  seems  to  me,  have  answered 
the  same  purpose,  and  answered  it  bet 
ter.  Human  nature  takes  neither  the 
skeleton  nor  the  mummy  with  continu- 
99 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

ous  seriousness,  and  proves  by  its  atti 
tude  that,  if  we  instinctively  fear  death 
at  one  moment,  we  instinctively  ridicule 
our  fear  at  another.  I  have  read  it  ar 
gued  that  man  with  his  clothes  on  is 
nevertheless  naked,  —  such  arguments 
seem  to  amuse  the  philosophers,  —  and 
by  the  same  entertaining  process  of  rea 
soning  we  are  all  skeletons  together, 
though  some  may  worry  lest  others  con 
sider  them  too  fat  for  romantic  admira 
tion.  Or,  again,  to  the  man  who  believes 
that  death  snuffs  him  out  like  a  candle, 
this  skeleton  at  the  feast  might  easily 
become  an  urgent  reminder  that  he  is 
still  living,  and  he  would  most  unwisely 
stuff  himself  out  like  a  toy  balloon  while 
he  still  had  a  chance.  But  your  olde, 
olde,  very  olde  man  is  a  reality:  he  is 
both  dead  and  alive ;  his  presence,  to  say 
nothing  of  his  table  manners,  should 
tend  to  make  each  guest  regard  death  as 
100 


THE  OLDE,  OLDE,  VERY  OLDE  MAN 

a  friend  rather  than  an  enemy,  and  his 
state  of  mind  and  body  prove  such  a 
warning  against  pride  in  either,  that 
even  the  after-dinner  speakers  would 
take  notice  and  modestly  shorten  their 
speeches. 

Let  it  not  be  imagined  that  I  lack  re 
spect  for  age.  I  tell  you  frankly,  ageing 
and  respected  Reader,  that  so  long  as 
you  can  intelligently  read  even  this  es 
say,  you  are  not  seriously  old ;  and  when 
you  cannot,  you  won't  know  the  differ 
ence,  and  no  respect  of  mine  will  be  of 
any  value  to  you.  Your  time  has  not 
come  to  sit  propped  up  at  table  as  the 
latest  modern  improvement  on  the  skel 
eton  at  the  feast ;  and  if  ever  it  does,  you, 
my  friend,  will  not  be  there.  Where  you 
will  be,  I  cannot  faintly  imagine,  and 
neither  churchmen  nor  philosophers 
help  me,  for  the  churchmen  are  too  ob 
jective  and  the  philosophers  too  ab- 
101 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

stract;  the  best  I  can  do  is  to  take  John 
Fiske's  word  for  it,  who  knew  far  more 
about  both  science  and  metaphysics 
than  I  can  hope  to,  when  he  says  the  ma 
terialistic  theory  that  the  life  of  the  soul 
ends  with  the  life  of  the  body  is  "per 
haps  the  most  colossal  instance  of  base 
less  assumption  that  is  known  to  the 
history  of  philosophy."  But  when  its 
house  has  become  a  ruin,  my  soul  will 
certainly  have  sense  enough  to  look  for 
something  more  habitable,  and  may 
conceivably  depart  while  there  are  still 
a  few  embers  burning  in  the  furnace, 
leaving  the  fire  to  die  out  when  it  will. 
Man  is  a  conventional  being,  and  per 
haps  his  most  astonishing  convention  is 
a  funeral. 

But  the  custom  has  long  gone  out  of 

thus  poignantly  reminding  diners  that 

a  time  is  coming  when  they  will  have  no 

stomachs ;  and  olde,  olde,  very  olde  men 

1 02 


THE  OLDE,  OLDE,  VERY  OLDE  MAN 

will  get  no  invitations  out  to  dine  for 
any  suggestion  of  mine.  Fortunately 
there  are  other  uses  for  them.  They  are, 
for  example,  a  source  of  innocent  pride 
to  their  families.  "  Grandpa  was  eighty- 
nine  his  last  birthday,  and  he  still  has  a 
tooth."  They  interest  the  million  read 
ers  of  the  morning  newspaper.  "  Friends 
from  far  and  near  gathered  yesterday  to 
celebrate  the  loist  birthday  of  Mr. John 
Doe,  17  Jones  Avenue.  The  venerable 
patriarch,  who  can  still  walk  unaided 
from  his  place  of  honor  by  the  steam 
radiator  to  his  cushioned  chair  in  the 
dining-room,  when  asked  to  what  he  at 
tributes  his  ripe  old  age,  replied  with  as 
tonishing  intelligence  that  the  winters 
are  longer  than  they  used  to  be.  Mr. 
Doe  was  surrounded  by  247  living  child 
ren,  grandchildren,  and  great-grand 
children."  These  are  visible  uses;  but 
this  olde,  olde,  very  olde  man  may  have, 
103 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

invisibly,  a  more  important  function; 
and  the  helplessness  of  age,  like  that  of 
infancy,  may  well  have  been  a  necessary 
factor  in  the  slow  conversion  of  our  ape 
like  ancestor  into  you  and  me. 

I  have  commented  elsewhere  on  the 
natural  astonishment  of  the  first  par 
ents  who  realized,  with  their  inefficient 
prehistoric  minds,  that  this  baby  be 
longed  to  them,  and  how,  in  the  consid 
ered  opinion  of  able  scientists,  the  little 
hitherto  missing  link  joined  father  and 
mother  into  the  first  human  family. 
Tending  and  providing  for  Baby  made 
the  cave  a  home ;  but  I  suspect  it  was  a 
long  time  before  tending  and  providing 
for  Grandpa  added  another  motive  for 
the  cultivation  of  those  higher  qualities 
that  distinguish  man  from  all  other  ani 
mals.  Why,  there  were  savages  who  ate 
him!  Yet  in  due  time  the  olde,  olde, 
very  olde  man  became  such  a  motive, 
104 


THE  OLDE,  OLDE,  VERY  OLDE  MAN 

and  to-day  man  is  the  only  animal  that 
takes  care  of  its  grandfather.  When  you 
think  of  the  differences  between  men  to 
day  and  men  then,  between  men  then 
and  the  ape-men  before  them,  and  be 
tween  men  now  as  they  go  about  their 
various  occupations,  it  seems  quite  pos 
sible  that  ape-men  had  no  souls  at  all, 
and  that  some  men  to-day  have  rudi 
mentary  ones,  millions  of  years  behind 
others  in  evolution.  It  explains  much. 
And  so,  wherever  there  is  an  olde,  olde, 
very  olde  man,  I  dare  say  the  care  his 
youngers  take  of  him  is  doing  them 
good;  they  might  even  reverse  the  pa 
rental  platitude  of  punishment,  and  say, 
"  Grandpa,  this  does  me  more  good  than 
it  does  you." 

But  this  proud  possession  of  an  olde, 

olde,  very  olde  man  does  not  always 

work   visibly   toward    such   beneficent 

ends.    His  obstreperous  infancy,  mas- 

105 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

querading  in  mature  garments,  some 
times  exhausts  the  patience  of  hisyoung- 
ers ;  and  his  permanent  conviction  (often 
the  only  sign  of  intelligence  left)  that  he 
knows  more  than  they  do,  and  perhaps 
more  than  anybody  else,  makes  their 
task  difficult :  it  is  one  thing,  so  to  speak, 
to  take  care  of  a  baby  when  it  is  growing 
up,  and  another  thing  to  take  care  of  a 
baby  when  it  is  growing  down.  Then, 
indeed,  one  needs  the  assurance  of  im 
mortality,  the  conviction  that  Grandpa 
is,  little  as  one  might  think  it,  still  grow 
ing  up,  and  that  this  simulacrum  of 
Grandpa  that  still  remains  to  be  looked 
after,  must  not  be  taken  too  seriously. 
These  olde,  olde,  very  olde  men  are  not 
all  just  alike:  there  are  grandpas  wrhom 
anybody  might  be  proud  to  take  care  of, 
and  grandpas  whom  anybody  might  be 
excused  for  wishing  (as  the  brisk,  mod 
ern  phrase  has  it)  to  sidestep.  And  the 
1 06 


THE  OLDE,  OLDE,  VERY  OLDE  MAN 

explanation  of  this  diversity,  as  of  much 
else  that  puzzles  us  in  a  puzzling  world, 
may  be  that  they  were  not  all  just  alike 
when  they  were  babies.  Inside  their 
thin  and  tiny  skulls  some  had  better 
brains  than  others,  brains  with  more  of 
those  wonderful  little  pyramidal  neu 
rones,  which,  able  scientists  (unless  I  get 
their  message  twisted)  tell  me,  correlate, 
connect,  assemble,  and  unite  our  indi 
vidual  ideas,  memories,  sensations,  and 
intellectual  and  emotional  what-nots. 
Men,  in  short,  may  be  born  free,  but 
they  are  not  born  equal. 

But  why  worry?  If  the  individual 
soul  is  still  young,  it  will  keep  on  grow 
ing  in  wisdom  and  experience ;  nor  will  it 
lose  touch  with  other  souls  that  are  akin 
to  it,  and,  in  the  measurement  of  eter 
nity,  its  contemporaries ;  and  it  will  have 
a  better  and  better  house  to  live  in,  with 
ever  more  modern  improvements  in  the 
107 


THE  SEVEN  AGES  OF  MAN 

way  of  pyramidal  neurones.  As  the 
March  Hare  conclusively  replied  to 
Alice,  when  she  asked  why  the  three  lit 
tle  sisters  who  lived  in  the  treacle  well 
learned  to  draw  by  drawing  everything 
that  began  with  an  M,  "Why  not?" 

So  if  ever  I  become  like  the  valetu 
dinarian  described  by  Macaulay,  who 
"took  great  pleasure  in  being  wheeled 
along  his  terrace,  who  relished  his  boiled 
chicken  and  his  weak  wine  and  water, 
and  who  enjoyed  a  hearty  laugh  over 
the  Queen  of  Navarre's  tales,"  I  hope 
that  somebody  will  considerately  push 
my  chariot,  boil  me  an  occasional 
chicken,  and  keep  handy  my  specta 
cles  and  the  Queen  of  Navarre's  mirth- 
provokers.  The  weak  wine  and  water  I 
shall  have  to  do  without.  But  my  soul, 
I  like  to  think,  which  is  the  Me  for 
work  and  play,  love,  friendship,  and  all 
the  finer  things  of  life,  already  will  have 
108 


THE  OLDE,  OLDE,  VERY  OLDE  MAN 

closed  the  door  of  its  house  and  gone 
away.  And  as  it  goes,  I  like  to  think, 
also,  that  it  whistles  cheerfully  a  little 
tune  of  its  own,  the  burden  of  which  is 
"Life  is  long." 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


Form  L-9-15m-7,'32 


A    000  931  317     2 


CALIFORNIA 
UBRARX 


